Garrula quid totis resonas mihi noctibus auris?
Nescio quem dicis nunc meminisse mei.
Which is a conceit hardly to be made out without the concession of a signifying Genius, or universal Mercury; conducting sounds unto their distant subjects, and teaching us to hear by touch.
The original of the proverb, Under the Rose be it, etc.
7. When we desire to confine our words, we commonly say they are spoken under the Rose; which expression is commendable, if the Rose from any natural property may be the Symbole of silence, as Nazianzene seems to imply in these translated verses:
Utq; latet Rosa Verna suo putamine clausa,
Sic os vincla ferat, validisq; arctetur habenis,
Indicatq; suis prolixa silentia labris:
And is also tolerable, if by desiring a secrecy to words spoke under the Rose, we only mean in society and compotation, from the ancient custom in Symposiack meetings, to wear chaplets of Roses about their heads: and so we condemn not the German custom, which over the Table describeth a Rose in the cieling. But more considerable it is, if the original were such as Lemnius, and others have recorded; that the Rose was the flower of Venus, which Cupid consecrated unto Harpocrates the God of silence, and was therefore an Emblem thereof, to conceal the pranks of Venery; as is declared in this Tetrastick;
Est Rosa flos veneris, cujus quo facta laterent,