vivid accuracy of his description. The passage in question records an
interesting incident in the poet's childhood. Escaping from his nurse,
he has rambled away from the little cottage on the slopes of Mount
Vultur, whither he had probably been taken from the sultry Venusia to
pass his _villeggiatura_ during the heat of summer, and is found
asleep, covered with fresh myrtle and laurel leaves, in which the
wood-pigeons have swathed him.

"When from my nurse erewhile, on Vultur's steep,
I stray'd beyond the bound
Of our small homestead's ground,
Was I, fatigued with play, beneath a heap
Of fresh leaves sleeping found,--

"Strewn by the storied doves; and wonder fell
On all, their nest who keep
On Acherontia's steep,
Or in Forentum's low rich pastures dwell,
Or Bantine woodlands deep,

"That safe from bears and adders in such place
I lay, and slumbering smiled,
O'erstrewn with myrtle wild,
And laurel, by the god's peculiar grace
No craven-hearted child."

The incident thus recorded is not necessarily discredited by the
circumstance of its being closely akin to what is told by Aelian of
Pindar, that a swarm of bees settled upon his lips, and fed him with
honey, when he was left exposed upon the highway. It probably had some