to his desire to take a line of his own, and make a fresh if a small
conquest for Latin poetry.

_Omnis ad accessus Heliconis semita trita est,
Et iam confusi manant de fonitibus amnes
Nec capiunt haustum, turbamque ad nota ruentem:
Integra quaeramus rorantes prata per herbas
Undamque occultis meditantem murmur in antris._

In a passage of nobler and more sincere feeling, he breaks off his
catalogue of the signs of the Zodiac to vindicate the arduous study of
abstract science--

_"Multum" inquis "tenuemque iubes me ferre laborem
Cernere cum facili lucem ratione viderer."
Quod quaeris, Deus est. Coneris scandere caelum
Fataque fatali genitus cognoscere lege
Et transire tuum pectus, mundoque potiri:
Pro pretio labor est, nec sunt immunia tanta._

Wherever one found this language used, in prose or verse, it would be
memorable. The thought is not a mere text of the schools; it is strongly
and finely conceived, and put in a form that anticipates the ardent and
lofty manner of Lucan, without his perpetual overstrain of expression.
Other passages, showing the same mental force, occur in the
_Astronomica_; one might instance the fine passage on the power of the
human eye to take in, within its tiny compass, the whole immensity of the
heavens; or another, suggested by the mention of the constellation Argo,
on the influence of sea-power on history, where the inevitable and well-
worn instances of Salamis and Actium receive a fresh life from the