xviii PREFACE. 



flowers, as may be seen in his poems, particularly of the 

 Rose, and the Violet, which he calls the flower of March ; 

 these he has introduced repeatedly : 



" Two flowers I love, the March-flower and the rose, 

 The lovely rose that is to Venus dear *." 



Ovid was, as might be expected, a lover of gardens, 

 and by a passage in one of his poems appears to have 

 been fond of writing in them. It is in his Tristia, where 

 he is regretting, during his voyage to the place of his 

 exile, the delight he used to feel in composing his verses 

 under the genial sky, and among the domestic comforts of 

 his native country : 



" Non hsec in nostris, ut quondam, scribimus hortis, 



Nee, consuete, meum, lectule, corpus habes : 

 Jactor in indomito brumali luce profundo, 



Ipsaque caeruleis charta feritur aquis. 

 Improba pugnat hiems, indignaturque, quod ausim 

 Scribere, se rigidas incutiente minas." 



Lib. i. Eleg. 11. 



" Not in my garden, as of old, I write, 



With thee, dear couch, to finish the delight : 



I toss upon a ghastly wintery sea, 



While the blue sprinkles dash my poetry. 



Fell winter's at his war; and storms the more 



To see me dare to write for all his threatening roar." 



Ovid is so fond of flowers, that, in the account of the 

 Rape of Proserpine in his Fasti, he devotes several lines 

 to the enumeration of the flowers gathered by her attend- 

 ants. Mr. Gibbon is very angry with him for it : " Can it be 

 believed," says he, " that the Rape of Proserpine should 

 be described in two verses, when the enumeration of the 

 flowers which she gathered in the garden of Eden had just 



* See Mr. Gary's Translation in the London Magazine, vol. v. page 

 507. 



