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To Cato it was nothing that he should leave to others the burden of living under Cæsar; but to himself the idea of a superior caused an unendurable affront. The "Catonis nobile letum" has reconciled itself to the poets of all ages. Men, indeed, have refused to see that he fled from a danger which he felt to be too much for him, and that in doing so he had lacked something of the courage of a man.

But this does not pass without admitting a dispute: for many are of opinion that we cannot quit this garrison of the world without the express command of Him who has placed us in it; and that it appertains to God who has placed us here, not for ourselves only but for His Glory and the service of others, to dismiss us when it shall best please Him, and not for us to depart without His licence: that we are not born for ourselves only, but for our country also, the laws of which require an account from us upon the score of their own interest, and have an action of manslaughter good against us; and if these fail to take cognisance of the fact, we are punished in the other world as deserters of our duty: "Proxima deinde tenent maesti loca, qui sibi letum Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi Proiecere animas."

Pascua Pieriis demum resonabat avenis, Atropos heu letum livida rupit opus Huic ingrata tulit tristem Florentia fructum, Exilium, vati patria cruda suo. Quem pia Guidonis gremio Ravenna Novelli Gaudet honorati continuisse ducis. Mille trecentenis ter septem Numinis annis, Ad sua septembris idibus astra redit." Wicksteed's The Early Lives of Dante.

In plain truth, it is no such great matter for a man in health and in a temperate state of mind to resolve to kill himself; it is very easy to play the villain before one comes to the point, insomuch that Heliogabalus, the most effeminate man in the world, amongst his lowest sensualities, could forecast to make himself die delicately, when he should be forced thereto; and that his death might not give the lie to the rest of his life, had purposely built a sumptuous tower, the front and base of which were covered with planks enriched with gold and precious stones, thence to precipitate himself; and also caused cords twisted with gold and crimson silk to be made, wherewith to strangle himself; and a sword with the blade of gold to be hammered out to fall upon; and kept poison in vessels of emerald and topaz wherewith to poison himself according as he should like to choose one of these ways of dying: "Impiger. . . ad letum et fortis virtute coacta."

In a minute or two he hit off this: TIMETOLETUM, which reads Time Toletum=Honour Toledo, or Timeto Letum=Fear death. Cayley's attempts, though not so neat, were not bad. Here are a couple of them: Though slight I am, no slight I stand, Saying my master's sleight of hand. or: Come to the point; unless you do, The point will shortly come to you.

Gabriel and Satan, when he knew no combat was to follow; then he makes the good angel's scale descend, and the devil's mount quite contrary to Virgil, if I have translated the three verses according to my author's sense: "Jupiter ipse duas aequota examine lances Sustinet, et fata imponit diversa duorum; Quem damnet labor, et quo vergat pondere letum."

Once more in Aen. xii. 725: "Quem damnet labor, aut quo vergat pondere letum," This feature in Virgil's verse, which might be illustrated at far greater length, reappears under another form in the Ovidian elegiac. There the pentameter answers to the second half of Virgil's hexameter verse, and rings the changes on the line that has preceded in a very similar way.