You, Furius, ask against what wind
My little villa stands--
If Auster, or Favonius kind
Who comes o'er western lands,
Or cruel Boreas, or that one
That rises with the morning sun?
Alas--it stands against a breeze
Which beats against the door,
Of fifteen thousand sesterces,
And twice a hundred more.
I challenge you on earth to find
So foul and pestilent a wind.
AQUILIUS.--What! do you look for a wind _on_ earth,--it blows over it;
and catch it who can.
GRATIAN.--It blows every where. The worst I know is that which blows
down the chimney. And that reminds me to tell you what a town-bred
chimney-sweeper said, the other day, to a friend of mine, in the valley
yonder, who wanted to have a smoky chimney cured. My friend inquired if
he could teach it not to smoke. "How can I tell?" said he, "I must take
out a brick first and look into his _intellects_."
CURATE.--Not the march--but the sweep of intellect spoke there.
AQUILIUS.--And spoke not amiss; it was merely to see if he _had a mind_
to be cured.
GRATIAN.--Perhaps you have translated that sweep's language better than
your passages from Catullus.
AQUILIUS.--I did not attempt to translate that little piece,--but ran
quite out of course, as the Curate would tell me, in a long paraphrase.
The idea is, however, furnished by Catullus,--so I dedicate it