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It is no more than just to add that, if his admiration for Vergil was quite restrained, and his attraction for Ovid's lucid outpourings even more circumspect, there was no limit to his disgust at the elephantine graces of Horace, at the prattle of this hopeless lout who smirkingly utters the broad, crude jests of an old clown.
No one knows what capacities he possesses for suffering and doing until an opportunity occurs to bring them into play; any more than he imagines when looking into a perfectly smooth pond with a mirror-like surface, that it can tumble and toss and rush from rock to rock, or leap as high into the air as a fountain; any more than in ice-cold water he suspects latent warmth. That line of Ovid's,
She had assumed that her nurse would become a member of the household again, as a matter of course. With Teresa to encourage her, she had summoned the resolution to live with Ovid's mother, until Ovid came back. And now she had been informed, in words too plain to be mistaken, that Teresa must find a home for herself when she returned to London!
Among the bold spirits who, with Captain John Smith, braved the pestilential swamps and wily Indians of Virginia, there were some lovers of literature, the most prominent of whom was George Sandys, who translated Ovid's "Metamorphoses" on the banks of James River. The work, published in London in 1620, was dedicated to Charles I. and received the commendations of Pope and Dryden.
Left alone again, Carmina opened her locket, and put Ovid's portrait by it on the table. Her sad fancy revived her dead parents imagined her lover being presented to them saw him winning their hearts by his genial voice, his sweet smile, his wise and kindly words.
Had the hard, solitary fight to be brave meant nothing except that she could write her husband stimulating letters and help his child to take up again the joys of youth? She had found and tested powers in herself that were not Ovid's. What meaning was there in her phrase "The wife of a Roman citizen?" She began to think over Ovid's idea of citizenship.
Of the extraordinary force and fineness of Ovid's natural genius, there never have been two opinions; had he but been capable of controlling it, instead of indulging it, he might have, in Quintilian's opinion, been second to no Roman poet. In his Medea, the critic adds, he did show some of this self-control; its loss is the more to be lamented.
What she had already written to Teresa, she now wrote again with but one modification. She expressed herself forbearingly towards Ovid's mother. The closing words of the letter were worthy of Carmina's gentle, just, and generous nature. "You will perhaps say, Why do I only hear now of all that you have suffered? My love, I have longed to tell you of it! I have even taken up my pen to begin.
'I am ill and miserable' that was all she said. She did indeed look so wretched that I forgave her directly. Would you not have done so too, in my place? "This happened a fortnight since. Only yesterday, she broke out again, and put my affection for her to a far more severe trial. I have not got over it yet. "There was a message for her in Ovid's letter expressed in the friendliest terms.
Ovid's natural generosity of feeling urged him to meet the advance, strangely as it had been made, with a friendly reception. "I am afraid it is I who have been rude," he said. "Will you go back with me, and be introduced to Carmina?" Benjulia made his acknowledgments in his own remarkable way. "No, thank you," he said, quietly, "I'd rather see the monkey."
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