Facts and fancies for the curious from the harvest-fields of literature

by Unknown

EVEN HOMER SOMETIMES NODS

Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.—Horace.

Jugurtha

The effect of Mr. Longfellow’s fine poem, “Jugurtha,” is impaired by a curious mistake. The first of the two stanzas composing it are as follows:

“‘How cold are thy baths, Apollo!’

Cried the African monarch, the splendid,

As down to his death in the hollow,

Dark dungeons of death he descended,

Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended,

‘How cold are thy baths, Apollo!’”