his own country, but the whole world, had--not the least of his
blessings--given to the seamen a calmed sea--_pacatum mare_. Lamenting
at Virgil's departure for Athens, he rebukes the impiety of the first
mariner who ventured, in the audacity of his heart, to go afloat and
cross the briny barrier interposed between nations. He esteems a
merchant favoured specially by the gods, should he twice or thrice a
year return in safety from an Atlantic cruise. He tells us he himself
had known the terrors of 'the dark gulf of the Adriatic,' and had
experienced 'the treachery of the western gale;' and expresses a
charitable wish, that the enemies of the Roman state were exposed to
the delights of both. He likens human misery to a sea 'roughened by
gloomy winds;' 'to embark once more on the mighty sea,' is his
figurative expression for once more engaging in the toils and troubles
of the world; Rome, agitated by the dangers of civil conflict,
resembles an ill-formed vessel labouring tempest-tossed in the waves;
his implacable Myrtale resembles the angry Adriatic, in which also he
finds a likeness to an ill-tempered lover. All through, from first to
last, the gentle Horace pelts with most ungentle phrases one of the
noblest objects in nature, provocative alike of our admiration and our
awe, our terror and our love.

And even Shakspeare must be ranged in the same category. The most
English of poets has not one laudatory phrase for

---- 'The seas
Which God hath given for fence impregnable'

to the poet's England. It is idle to say that Shakspeare was
inland-bred--that he knew nothing, and could therefore have cared
nothing about the matter--seeing that, insensible as he might have