Word: ovide
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Amateur Latin verse is all very well, if the quantities and forms are all right, and the constructions classical. But if the lines will not scan, it is of no account that they can be rattled over so as to read something like Virgil or Ovid...
...first line is very pretty, being a judicious combination of Ovid, Met. II. 29, and X. 1. This patching is quite legitimate, and we wish all the rest were similarly constructed. The fourth and fifth lines also are correct, metrically; but esuries is a terribly rare and unpoetical word. In line second, opibus has the o short, so it cannot begin a hexameter. In line third, the perfect of fundo is not fusi, and the line is very jerky. Risit would have scanned as well, and suited the other tenses better. In line sixth, coronae cannot begin a hexameter...
...command, castle, example, I won't undertake to decide; he certainly has much authority on his side. Perhaps, however, the safest way to shun the extremities represented by the Western haff and laff and the Yankee's parst and larst is to follow the medio tutissimus ibis rule of Ovid...
...cannot sing as Ovid sung...
...insinuations against Harvard, and also that, so eager had this gentleman been to detect a mote in Mr. Allen's eye, he had not discovered the beam in his own eye; as, for instance, when he attacks Mr. Allen for using constructions which are sanctioned by the usage of Ovid and Horace. Of course, we do not suppose that the majority of our readers are interested in this discussion, and we therefore do not intend to enter into it very fully, though we are always very glad when our professors find our columns useful in their discussions...