There
we sometimes read old newspapers, who never before read new ones,
and in the rustle of their leaves heard the dashing of the surf
along the Atlantic shore, instead of the sough of the wind among
the pines. But then walking had given us an appetite even for
the least palatable and nutritious food.
Some hard and dry book in a dead language, which you have found
it impossible to read at home, but for which you have still a
lingering regard, is the best to carry with you on a journey. At
a country inn, in the barren society of ostlers and travellers, I
could undertake the writers of the silver or the brazen age with
confidence. Almost the last regular service which I performed in
the cause of literature was to read the works of
AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS.
If you have imagined what a divine work is spread out for the
poet, and approach this author too, in the hope of finding the
field at length fairly entered on, you will hardly dissent from
the words of the prologue,
"Ipse semipaganus
Ad sacra Vatum carmen affero nostrum.
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