Cras ingens iterabimus æquor.—Horace: Ode to Munatius Plancus.
(Now drown your cares in wine;
To-morrow we shall traverse the great brine.)
Dryden, alluding to his work, says,—
When it was only a confused mass of thoughts tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished, and there either to be chosen or rejected by the judgment.—Rival Ladies (1664).
Byron thus appropriates the idea:—
——As yet ’tis but a chaos
Of darkly brooding thoughts; my fancy is
In her first work, more nearly to the light