GRATIAN.--Read that last again--for "my eyes," I confess, were not as "curious" as they should have been, and were just closing as you came to the wooing. AQUILIUS.-- That there be none to note the number, Nor tongue to babble of our doing. GRATIAN.--Well, rubbing his eyes, I am quite awake now; let us have your version, Master Curate. CURATE.--AD LESBIAM. Dost bid me, my Lesbia, A number define, To fill me, and glut me With kisses of thine? When equal thy kisses The atoms of sand, By spicy Cyrene On Lybia's strand, The sand grains extending From Ammon's hot shrine, To the tomb of old Battus, That land-mark divine. Or count me the star-lights That see from above, In still night, the thievings Of mortals in love. Thus canst thou, my Lesbia, A number assign, To glut thy mad lover With kisses of thine. A number the prying To reckon may spare; And gossips, unlucky, Give up in despair. GRATIAN.--(After a pause, his eyes half closed,) "Give up in despair." Very mu--si--cal--sooth--ing. AQUILIUS.--See, you have set our host asleep; and, judging from his last words, his dream will not be unpleasant. We must not come to a sudden silence, or it will waken him. The murmur of the brook that invites sleep, is pledged to its continuance. The winds and the pattering rain, says the Roman elegiast, assist the sleeper. Aut gelidas hibernus aquas eum fuderit auster Securum somnos imbre juvante sequi. We must not, however, proceed with our translations. Take up Landor's Pentameron, and begin where you left off, when we first entered upon this discussion of Catullus. He seemed to give the preference to Catullus over Horace. Here is the page,--read on. The Curate at once took the volume and read aloud.--The following passage arrested our attention:-- "In return for my suggestion, pray tell me what is the meaning of Obliquo laborat Lympha fugax trepidare rivo. "PETRARCHA.--The moment I learn it you shall have it. Laborat trepidare! lympha rivo! fugax, too! Fugacity is not the action for hard work or _labour_. "BOCCACCIO.--Since you cannot help me out, I must give up the conjecture, it seems, while it has cost me only half a century. Perhaps it may be _curiosa felicitas_." AQUILIUS--Stay there:--that criticism is new to me. I never even fancied there was a difficulty in the passage. Let us consider it a moment. CURATE.--Does he then think Horace not very choice in his words? for he seems to be severe upon the "_curiosa felicitas_." Surely the diction of the Latin poets is all in all--For their ideas seem hard stereotyped,--uninterchangeable, the very reverse of the Greek, in whom you always find some unexpected turn, some new thought, thrown out beautifully in the rapidity of their conception--excepting in Sophocles--who, attending more to his diction, deals perhaps a little too much in common-place.