Tot rixarum soliteque,
Ut in tabo saltitare
Cæci homines cogantur!
Fac, qui hostes sunt Scotorum,
Anni spatium cruciantur
Dirum dentium per dolorem!
Before I had finished the closing stanza, the pain entirely left me—whether it was owing to the exorcizing qualities of the Latin, the soothing influence of the verse, the defiance-breathing spirit of the sentiment, or to the length of time requisite for the performance, I am unable to decide. Suffice it to say, that if any one, in making trial of the remedy himself, after translating ten English stanzas into Latin rhyme, experiences no relief, let him take an hundred stanzas. If after this performance the pain still continues, let the prescription be a thousand stanzas; and unless the patient be an uncommonly rapid, or an unpardonably careless versifier, we hesitate not to predict that ere he has accomplished half his task, one of two things will prove true—either the tooth-ache will have left him for ever, or he will have bidden farewell to the tooth-ache, and, with it, to all the pains, and sorrows, and sufferings of this ‘vale of tears.’
GREEK ANTHOLOGY.—No. V.
Whew! baked, parched, roasted, toasted, seethed, stewed, boiled, broiled, and all the other synonymes of igniferous horror. Oh! ye dark-skinned Ethiops, how I love you! Verily I am an amalgamationist. “Ye are black, but comely as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.” Though angry Phoebus did once pour his fierceness upon your sweating brows, till they were dusky as the wings of night, yet are ye not misimproved thereby; for your impenetrable nigritude, surmounted by your oily fleece—more precious than that golden one, after which sailed Jason and the Argonauts—can bid defiance to the heat of Hyperion. One would think young Phoebus had again mounted the car of the far-flinging Apollo, when, as Ovid has it,
“Inferiusque suis fraternos currere Luna