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Quod si quem etiam ista delectant, ne omnino bellum indixisse videar voluptati, cuius est fortasse quidam naturalis modus, non intellego ne in istis quidem ipsis voluptatibus carere sensu senectutem.

Therefore one ought to take a little heed not to call that force which is only a pretty knack of writing, and that solid which is only sharp, or that good which is only fine: "Quae magis gustata quam potata, delectant," Cicero, Tusc. everything that pleases does not nourish: "Ubi non ingenii, sed animi negotium agitur."

Nobody who did not share the scholar's enthusiasm could have described the blind scholar in his library in the adorable fifth chapter of Romola; and we feel that she must have copied out with keen gusto of her own those words of Petrarch which she puts into old Bardo's mouth 'Libri medullitus delectant, colloquuntur, consulunt, et viva quadam nobis atque arguta familiaritate junguntur.

"adolescentiam agunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium præbent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris; pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur."

For me, Romola, even when I could see, it was with the great dead that I lived; while the living often seemed to me mere spectres shadows dispossessed of true feeling and intelligence; and unlike those Lamiae, to whom Poliziano, with that superficial ingenuity which I do not deny to him, compares our inquisitive Florentines, because they put on their eyes when they went abroad, and took them off when they got home again, I have returned from the converse of the streets as from a forgotten dream, and have sat down among my books, saying with Petrarca, the modern who is least unworthy to be named after the ancients, `Libri medullitus delectant, colloquuntur, consulunt, et viva quadam nobis atque arguta familiaritate junguntur."

In the words with which he winds up one of the most elaborate of his descriptive pieces, that on the lake of Vadimo in Tuscany Me nihil aeque ac naturae opera delectant there is an accent which hardly recurs till the age of the Seasons and of Gray's Letters.

Even Virgil, who occasionally paints a bit of landscape or seascape in the Aeneid, does so in a half-hearted fashion, as a mere preface to the incident which is to follow, not from a poet's love of beauty. In Pliny, on the other hand, we find the modern love for a beautiful view. Me nihil aeque ac natura opera delectant.

NUMQUAM DESERUNT: the omission of the object after deserunt is not common. With the general sense of this passage cf. Arch. 16 litterarum studia adulescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solarium praebent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur.

"Delectant me gladii parvi, seu styli scriptorii, in quos plus viginti coronatis aureis impendi: multas etiam pecunias in varia pennarum genera, audeo dicere apparatum ad scribendum ducentis coronatis non potuisse emi." De Vita Propria, ch. xviii. p. 57. De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. 15.

Me vero et magisteria delectant a maioribus instituta et is sermo, qui more maiorum a summo adhibetur in poculo, et pocula sicut in Symposio Xenophontis est, minuta atque rorantia, et refrigeratio aestate et vicissim aut sol aut ignis hibernus.