Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.
Ovid
Ovid ranged over all Parnassus with great nimbleness and agility; but as he did not much care for the toil requisite to climb the upper part of the hill, he was generally roving about the bottom.
Joseph Addison.
He has none of those little points and puerilities that are so often to be met with in Ovid; none of the epigrammatic turns of Lucan; none of those swelling sentiments which are so frequent in Statius and Claudian; none of those mixed embellishments of Tasso.Joseph Addison.
The most severe censor cannot but be pleased with the prodigality of Ovid’s wit; though he could have wished that the master of it had been a better manager.
If sometimes Ovid appears too gay, there is a secret gracefulness of youth which accompanies his writings, though the stayedness and sobriety of age be wanting.
No man has ever treated the passions of love with so much delicacy of thought and of expression, or searched into the nature of it more philosophically, than Ovid.
The turn of words, in which Ovid excels all poets, are sometimes a fault or sometimes a beauty, as they are used properly or improperly.
