OF SELBORNE. 255 
with a like rising opposite to it, at a few hundred 
yards’ distance ; and perhaps success might be the 
easier ensured could some canal, lake, or stream 
intervene. From a seat at the centrum phonicum 
he and his friends might amuse themselves some. 
times of an evening with the prattle of this loqua- 
cious nymph, of whose complacency and decent 
reserve more may be said than can with truth of 
every individual of her sex, since she is 
“Que nec reticere loquenti, 
Nec prior ipsa loqui, didicit resonabilis echo.” 
The classic reader will, I trust, pardon the fol- 
lowing lovely quotation, so finely describing echoes, 
and so poetically accounting for their causes from 
popular superstition : 
‘¢ Quz bené quom videas, rationem reddere possis 
Tute tibi atque aliis, quo pacto per loca sola 
Saxa pareis formas verborum ex ordine reddant, 
Palanteis comites quom monteis inter opacos 
Quezrimus, et magna dispersos voce ciemus. 
Sex etiam, aut septem loca vidi reddere voces 
Unam quom jaceres : ita colles collibus ipsis 
Verba repulsantes iterabant dicta referre. 
Hec loca capripedes Satyros, Nymphasque tenere 
Finitimi fingunt, et Faunos esse loquuntur; 
Quorum noctivago strepitu, ludoque jocanti 
Adfirmant volgo taciturna silentia rumpi, 
Chordarumque sonos fieri, dulceisque querelas, 
Tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum ; 
Et genus agricolum laté sentiscere, quom Pan 
Pinea semiferi capitis velamina quassans, 
Unco sepe labro calamos percurrit hianteis, 
Fistula silvestrem ne cesset fundere musam.” 
LucrETIUs, lib. iv., ]. 57€ 
