3 Literary Comparisons
With no claim to originality, or any comment on actual influence.
I.
1. Terence, Phormio 104–8.
virgo pulchra, et quo mage diceres,
nil aderat adiumenti ad pulchritudinem:
capillu’ passu’, nudu’ pes, ipsa horrida,
lacrumae, vestitu’ turpis: ut, ni vis boni
in ipsa inesset forma, haec formam exstinguerent.A pretty maiden, and what’s more, she had
no helps to beauty: frazzled hair, bare feet,
herself ashiver, tears, and rags for clothes:
so that, if beauty didn’t do such good,
these trappings would have snuffed her beauty out.
2. The first sentence of Middlemarch (1871):
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
II.
1. Virgil, Aeneid 6.620. The damned Phlegyas speaks in Hell:
Discite iustitiam moniti et non temnere divos.
So warned, be just and do not scorn the gods.
2. Paradise Lost, the end of book 6.
… let it profit thee to have heard
By terrible Example the reward
Of disobedience; firm they might have stood,
Yet fell; remember, and fear to transgress.
III.
1. Horace, Ars poetica 268–9.
vos exemplaria Graeca
nocturna versate manu, versate diurna.Greek models ye shall turn in your hand by night: by day ye shall turn them over .
2. Pirqé Aboth, 5.22
בֶּן בַּג בַּג אוֹמֵר. הֲפֹךְ בָּהּ וַהֲפֹךְ בָּהּ. דְּכֹלָּא בָהּ
Ben Bag Bag saith [of the Torah]: Turn it over and turn it over: for everything is in it.