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, "Purae rivus aquae."--Then, again, describing the character of Tibur or Tivoli, he does not say the Anio; but "aquae," as in the other instance "Lympha." "Sed quae Tibur aquae fertile praefluunt," --"fertile," being the effect of the _irrigation_, the purpose for which the aquae are turned from the river; and this agrees well with the word _praefluunt_, as applied to irrigated gardens. Pliny thus uses the adjective praefluus: "Hortos esse habendos _irriguos praefluo 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 aquae_, Quaeruntur in sylvis aves, _Fontesque Lymphis_ obstrepunt manantibus, Somnos quod inortet leves."