Page:Essays - Abraham Cowley (1886).djvu/192



Page 15.Fertur equis, &c. From the close of Virgil's first Georgic: said of horses in a chariot race, Nor reins, nor curbs, nor threatening cries they fear, But force along the trembling charioteer. Dryden's translation.

,,16.En Romanos, &c. Virgil, AEneid I., when Jove says, The people Romans call, the city Rome, To them no bounds of empire I assign, Nor term of years to their immortal line. Dryden's Virgil.

,,18."Laveer with every wind." Laveer is an old sea term for working the ship against the wind. Lord Clarendon used its noun, "the schoolmen are the best laveerers in the world, and would have taught a ship to catch the wind that it should have gained half and half, though it had been contrary."

,,24.Amatorem trecentæ Pirithoum cohibent catenæ. Horace's Ode, Bk. IV., end of ode 4. Three hundred chains bind the lover, Pirithous: Wrath waits on sin, three hundred chains Pirithous bind in endless pains.Creech's Translation.

,,25.Aliena negotia, &c. From Horace's Satires, sixth of Book II.

,,25.Dors, cockchafers.

,,26.Pan huper sebastos. Lord over All.

,,27.Perditur hæc inter misero Lux. Horace, Satires, II., 6. This whole Satire is in harmony with the spirit of Cowley's Essays.

,,29.A slave in Saturnalibus. In the Saturnalia, when Roman slaves had licence to disport themselves.

,,29.Unciatim, &c. Terence's Phormio, Act I., scene 1, in the opening: "All that this poor fellow has, by starving himself, bit by bit, with much ado, scraped together out of his pitiful allowance—(must go at one swoop, people never considering the price it cost him the getting)." Eachard's Terence.