DEFINITION OF POETRY. 73 



Dura pati, cursuque pedum praevertere ventos. 

 Ilia vel intactae segetis per summa volaret 

 Gramina ; nee teneras cursu laesisset aristas : 

 Vel mare per medium, fluctu suspensa tumenti, 

 Ferret iter ; celeres nee tingeret aequore plantas." 



jn. L. VII. v. 803, &c. 



Here is a young lady who can outstrip the winds in 

 her running, i.e. her speed of foot is a trifle more than 

 100 miles per hour; she can also dance a pas seul in 

 a barley field on the top of the ripened ears without 

 injuring a single filament of the beards and moreover 

 she can walk about on the sea, of a summer evening, and 

 look down at the operations of the pretty fishes below, 

 without wetting her feet. You will say, what a stupid 

 fellow I must be not to see that this is written in hyper- 

 bole, granted but that proves the truth of my defini- 

 tion, for hyperbole is only a genteel name for falsehood. 

 A passage or two from my dear favorite, the sweet 

 singer of Venusia, 



" Ut barbarorurn Claudius agmina 

 Ferrata vasto diruit impetu, 

 Primosque et extremes metendo 

 Stravit hutnum," Lib. IV. Carm. XIV. v. 29, &c. 

 We are told as a fact that a certain great man of 

 yore cut his whetstone through with a razor ; but in 

 this passage Horace tells us that Claudius mowed down 

 the iron ranks of the barbarians : what sort of a scythe 

 had he ? 



In describing his jealousy of Lydia, he says 



" Humor et in genas 

 Furtim labitur, arguens 

 Quam lentis penitus macerer ignibus." 



Lib. I. Carm. XIII. v. 6, &c 



declaring positively that he has a fire in his inside : we 

 have seen salamander-like people who would wash 

 their hands in boiling oil and devour lighted sealing 

 wax ; but we do firmly believe that the most anticom- 

 bustible one amongst them would be puzzled to walk 

 about with a fire in his inside. 



Perhaps Horace was a little too much heated will; 

 Falernian or his favorite Massic when he wrote this. 



Shakespeare talks of the " moonlight" " sleeping on 

 a bank," and James Hogg avers that he has climbed 



