The object of the Latin poets should seem to have been to introduce gracefully, into their own language, what the Greeks had left them; and the nature of this labour quenched the fire of originality, if they had any.—It is hard, however, to deny them the fruits of this labour; and who was more happy in it than Horace?
Aquilius.—Surely, and the familiar love that all bear to Horace, confirms your opinion—the general opinion. Now, I cannot but think Horace happy in his choice of words, in this very passage of
obliquo laborat,
Lympha fugax trepidare rivo.
Let me suggest a meaning, which to me is obvious enough, and I am surprised it should have escaped so acute and so profound a critic. Horace supposes his friend enjoying the landscape in remoto gramine, and there describes it accurately; and it is a favourite scene with him, which he often paints in words, with the introduction of the same imagery. Suppose, then, the scene to be in remoto gramine at Tiber, our modern Tivoli; where, as I presume, the water was always, as now, though not in exactly the same way, turned off from the Anio into cut channels; and such I take to be the meaning generally of rivers, a channel, not a river. And the Lympha here is appropriate; not the body of the stream, but a portion of its water. In this case, “obliquo” may express a new direction, and some obstacle in the turn the river takes, where the water would for a moment seem to labour, “laborare fugax,” expressing its desire to escape. May not, therefore, the first evident meaning be allowed to “trepidare,” to tremble, or undulate, showing the motion a rivulet assumes, just after it has turned the angle of its obstruction. “Obliquo,” may, too, mean the slope, such as would be in a garden at Tivoli, on the verge of the precipice. Possibly Horace generally uses “rivus” in this sense, “Puræ rivus aquæ.”—Then, again, describing the character of Tibur or Tivoli, he does not say the Anio; but “aquæ,” as in the other instance “Lympha.”
“Sed quæ Tibur aquæ fertile præfluunt,”
—“fertile,” being the effect of the irrigation, the purpose for which the aquæ are turned from the river; and this agrees well with the word præfluunt, as applied to irrigated gardens. Pliny thus uses the adjective præfluus: “Hortos esse habendos irriguos præfluo amne.” But there is one passage in Horace where this meaning is so distinctly given to rivers, and which is so characteristic of the very scene of Tibur, that to me it is conclusive.
“et uda
Mobilibus pomarea rivis.”
Evidently channels, moveable and diverse at pleasure, for irrigation.
Nor would Horace use Lympha for a river, or be amenable to a charge of such tautology as this:—
“Labuntur altis interim ripis aquæ,
Quæruntur in sylvis aves,
Fontesque Lymphis obstrepunt manantibus,
Somnos quod inortet leves.”