The answer was a laugh. "Nothing, but that Downing Street has turned into Parnassus. The astounding fact is, that Grenville has teemed, and, as the fruits of the long vacation, has produced a Latin epigram.
'Veris risit Amor roses caducas:
Cui Ver—"Vane puer, tuine flores,
Quaeso, perpetuum manent in aevum?'"
The prince laughed. "He writes on the principle, of course, that in one's dotage we are privileged to return to the triflings of our infancy, and that Downing Street cannot be better employed in these days than as a chapel of ease to Eton."
"Yet, even there, he is but a translator," said Sir P——.
"'The tenth transmitter of an idler's line,'
It is merely a rechauffé of the old Italian.
'Amor volea schernir la primavera
Sulla breve durata e passegiera
Dei vaghi fiori suoi.
Ma la belle stagione a lui rispose
Forse i piacere tuoi
Vita piu lunga avran delle mie rose.'"
The prince, who, under Cyril Jackson, had acquired no trivial scholarship, now alluded to a singular poetic production, printed in 1618, which seemed distinctly to announce the French Revolution.
'Festinat propere cursu jam temporis ordo,
Quo locus, et Franci majestas prisca, senatus,
Papa, sacerdotes, missae, simulacra, Deique
Fictitii, atque omnis superos exosa potestas,
Judicio Domini justo sublata peribunt.[A]
[Footnote A: