_"Multum" inquis "tenuemque iubes me ferre laborem Cernere cum facili lucem ratione viderer." Quod quaeris, Deus est. Coneris scandere caelum Fataque fatali genitus cognoscere lege Et transire tuum pectus, mundoque potiri: Pro pretio labor est, nec sunt immunia tanta._ Wherever one found this language used, in prose or verse, it would be memorable. The thought is not a mere text of the schools; it is strongly and finely conceived, and put in a form that anticipates the ardent and lofty manner of Lucan, without his perpetual overstrain of expression. Other passages, showing the same mental force, occur in the _Astronomica_; one might instance the fine passage on the power of the human eye to take in, within its tiny compass, the whole immensity of the heavens; or another, suggested by the mention of the constellation Argo, on the influence of sea-power on history, where the inevitable and well- worn instances of Salamis and Actium receive a fresh life from the citation of the destruction of the Athenian fleet in the bay of Syracuse, and the great naval battles of the first Punic war. Or again, the lines with which he opens the fourth book, weakened as their effect is by what follows them, a tedious enumeration of events showing the power of destiny over human fortunes, are worthy of a great poet:-- _Quid tam sollicitis vitam consumimus annis, Torquemurque metu caecaque cupidine rerum? Acternisque senes curis, dum quaerimus aevum Perdimus, et nullo votorum fine beati Victuros agimus semper, nec vivimus unquam?_