Book 2
6
This was [ever] among the number of my wishes: a portion of ground not over large, in which was a garden, and a founain with a continual stream close to my house, and a little woodland besides.The gods have done more abundantly, and better, for me [than this]. It is well: 0 son of Maia, Maia nate. He addresses his prayer to Mercury, not only because this god was a patron of poets in general, and that our poet, as we find in his Odes, was particularly obliged to his protection, but because he presided over industry and merchandise, as Hercules did over any sudden, accidental increase of riches. Besides, he was a rural deity, from whence, as Dacier observes, the poet recommends the preservation of his cattle to him, in the fourteenth verse. I ask nothing more save that you would render these donations lasting to me. If I have neither made my estate larger by bad means, nor am in a way to make it less by vice or misconduct; if I do not foolishly make any petition of this sort"Oh that that neighboring angle, which now spoils the regularity Denormat. We do not find this word in any other author. of my field, could be added! Oh that some accident would discover to me an urn [full] of money! as it did to him, who having found a treasure, bought that very ground he before tilled in the capacity of an hired servant, enriched by Hercules' being his friend;" if what I have at present satisfies me grateful, I supplicate you with this prayer: make my cattle fat for the use of their master, and every thing else, except my genius: Et caetera praeter ingenium. The Latins, in speaking of style, have expressions not unlike this, pingue et adipatum dicendi genus; poetae pinguae quiddam sonantes. This playing on the double meaning of the word is much in our author's manner. Besides, Mercury was a good humored god, who understood raillery, de Dis non tristibus. Yet, for fear the deity should understand the word caetera in its full extent, and without any exception, the petitioner pleasantly guards against the fatness of his understanding. and, as you are wont, be present as my chief guardian. Wherefore, when I have removed myself from the city to the mountains and my castle, In arcem. He considers his country-house as a citadel inaccessible to the cares that besieged him at Rome. (what can I polish, preferably to my satires and prosaic muse? Musaque pedestri. The muse of satire, if such an expression may be allowed, is a muse on foot. She borrowed nothing from poetry but the measures of her verses, tho, only particular in which she differs from prose. ) neither evil ambition destroys me, nor the heavy Plumbeus. This epithet very well expresses the weight of air in autumn, when the south wind was usually attended at Rome with pestilential disorders. Our poet's country-house was covered by mountains, in such a manner, that he had nothing to fear from its bad effects. south wind, nor the sickly autumn, the gain of baleful Libitina.
