they should gleam with the brilliancy woven into the fabric. Homer is an
example, and the lyric poets, and our Roman Virgil, and the exquisite
propriety of Horace. Either the others did not discover the road that
leads to poetry, or, having seen, they feared to tread it. Whoever
attempts that mighty theme, the civil war, for instance, will sink under
the load unless he is saturated with literature. Events, past and
passing, ought not to be merely recorded in verse, the historian will
deal with them far better; by means of circumlocutions and the
intervention of the immortals, the free spirit, wracked by the search for
epigrams having a mythological illusion, should plunge headlong and
appear as the prophecy of a mind inspired rather than the attested faith
of scrupulous exactitude in speech. This hasty composition may please
you, even though it has not yet received its final polishing:"




CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEENTH.

"The conquering Roman now held the whole world in his sway,

The ocean, the land; where the sun shone by day or the moon

Gleamed by night: but unsated was he. And the seas

Were roiled by the weight of his deep-laden keels; if a bay

Lay hidden beyond, or a land which might yield yellow gold

'Twas held as a foe. While the struggle for treasure went on