Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/390

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

" strenua " is made to correspond with "laboriose nihil agendo" is unhesitatingly, sometimes enthusiastically, accepted. " Busy idleness " is given by Creech, by Smart, and by Lonsdale and Lee ; " busy idlers " by Martin ; " laborious idleness " by Francis and by Anthon ; "active inactivity" by Conington ; " travail oisif " by Dacier ; " oisivete labori- euse " by Leconte de Lisle. Broome omits the sentence ; so does Hose.

Is there anything in " navibus atque quad- rigis petimus bene vivere " to conduce to the view thus generally indicated? One need not stop to consider that the quadriga was not a likely carriage to be used for travelling. The word is accurate enough for the purposes of facetious poetry and fills its place in the line. Horace was not taking the trouble to write very carefully. The moral is drawn for people sometimes in the third person plural, sometimes in the first ; and, presum- ably for Horace's correspondent, in the second person singular. We may take it that both ship and coach yacht and four-in-hand are for travelling and not for sporting purposes. This being so, is it suggested that the happy life is to be found in locomotion itself? If so, there might be reason for attacking the fallacy either by direct or by paradoxical statement. But it is difficult to recognize such suggestion in any translation, unless, indeed, in Leconte de Lisle's " montant pour vivre heureux sur des nefs et des quadriges," where petimus finds a most insufficient equi- valent in pour. The view of his predecessor Dacier is very clear : " Nous cherchons le bonheur par *mer et par terre." Broome, Creech, Francis, Martin, Hose, translate to the same effect. Smart writes vaguely "by ships and chariots we seek to live happily ; he does not write in.

Dean Wickham has a note " by means of locomotion," and brings locomotion into con- nexion with the favourite paradox by a remark that " travelling is working hard at doing nothing." This may be true in some sense of one climbing a peak with no object but to say that he has climbed it, or a cyclist labouring to beat his last week's record. But even in such cases, if such there be, the ground covered represents something done. Travelling is not always hard. It may be very easy. Lasy or hard, it may accom- plish a gain of health, wealth, knowledge, experience, a most important something done. When, even without crossing the sea, Horace shifts from Rome, as others from London, it is not the transit that is in question, but the change from the smoke and noise to the woods and waters of Tivoli in the one case,


 * o the cure of " merry Doctor Brighton " in

the other. And when wise counsels send you to the pinewoods of Costebelle, it is with Little regard to the pleasures of the Folke- stone boat or the luxuries of the P.L.M.

Where can I find this rendering that has escaped me, convening the meaning that 'strenua inertia" has nothing to do with travelling troubles, nothing with " laboriose nihil agendo," but everything to do with the conservative force which makes change of climate powerless to affect our character, and, in the words of the motto of an ancient family, keeps us the same " Hie et Ulubris " ?

KILLIGREW. Costebelle.

NATURE POETRY. One of the dangers of literary criticism is that it is prone to lure its votaries towards those perilous paths trodden aforetime by the Wise Men of Gotham. The opinion and decisions of a coterie are apt to be reckoned as new and final, no regard being had to what is out of and beyond the favoured circle. An old and forgotten dis- covery comes up in a new guise, and is hailed with gladness and rejoicing as that for which humanity has been waiting. And now the one thing is to make sure of it ; a strenuous effort must be made to "hedge in that cuckoo." At the moment, for example, Mr. Gosse is being widely credited with having recently made a most significant revelation. That acute and excellent critic, according to his followers, has discovered that Thomson of ' The Seasons ' was " the real pioneer of the whole romantic movement, with its return to nature and simplicity." Mr. Gosse himself, of course, knows to what extent his intimation is a discovery, but he is not responsible for the use that is being made of his "voice" by those who like to "hedge in" a good thing when it comes their way. Mr. A. M'Millan manifestly a romanticist supremely indif- ferent to the meretricious charms of the heroic couplet supplements Mr. (in the Literary World of. 18 March, p. 247) asserting that Thomson's " chief merit coi sists in nis having been the first to rise ii revolt against the artificial rhyme-mongerinj of the days of Pope, when writers of verse

Sway'd about upon a rocking-horse, And thought it Pegasus."

This champion of romance may induce his readers to conclude that the "days of Pope' and those of Thomson fell within entirely dif- ferent periods, and he will undoubtedly convey to their enraptured ears an erroneous impres- sion of the fixed intention and the resolute purpose underlying the composition of ' The