The Spectators And
Ramblers Have Not Failed To Cull Some Quotable Sentences From
This Garden Too, So Pleasant Is It To Meet Even The Most Familiar
Truth In A New Dress, When, If Our Neighbor Had Said It, We
Should Have Passed It By As Hackneyed.
Out of these six satires,
you may perhaps select some twenty lines, which fit so well as
many thoughts, that they will recur to the scholar almost as
readily as a natural image; though when translated into familiar
language, they lose that insular emphasis, which fitted them for
quotation.
Such lines as the following, translation cannot
render commonplace. Contrasting the man of true religion with
those who, with jealous privacy, would fain carry on a secret
commerce with the gods, he says: -
"Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque humilesque susurros
Tollere de templis; et aperto vivere voto."
It is not easy for every one to take murmurs and low
Whispers out of the temples, and live with open vow.
To the virtuous man, the universe is the only _sanctum sanctorum_,
and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his
existence. Why should he betake himself to a subterranean crypt,
as if it were the only holy ground in all the world which he had
left unprofaned? The obedient soul would only the more discover
and familiarize things, and escape more and more into light and
air, as having henceforth done with secrecy, so that the universe
shall not seem open enough for it.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 331 of 422
Words from 91343 to 91593
of 116321
