[Footnote 1: The Roman grammarian, who flourished about A.D. 450, and has
left a work entitled "Commentariorum grammaticorum Libri
xviii."--_W. E. B._]
THE LAST SPEECH AND DYING WORDS
OF DANIEL JACKSON
MY DEAR COUNTRYMEN,
--mediocribus esse poetis
Non funes, non gryps, non concessere columnae.[1]
To give you a short translation of these two lines from Horace's Art of
Poetry, which I have chosen for my neck-verse, before I proceed to my
speech, you will find they fall naturally into this sense:
For poets who can't tell [high] rocks from stones,
The rope, the hangman, and the gallows groans.
I was born in a fen near the foot of Mount Parnassus, commonly called the
Logwood Bog. My mother, whose name was Stanza, conceived me in a dream,
and was delivered of me in her sleep. Her dream was, that Apollo, in the
shape of a gander, with a prodigious long bill, had embraced her; upon
which she consulted the Oracle of Delphos, and the following answer was
made:
You'll have a gosling, call it Dan,
And do not make your goose a swan.
'Tis true, because the God of Wit
To get him in that shape thought fit,
He'll have some glowworm sparks of it.
Venture you may to turn him loose,
But let it be to another goose.
Pages:
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393