Sub specie tetr deturpat corpora Lepra; Tiria prima datur, de flegmate quae generatur; Turpe pilos pascens Alopicus, sanguine nascens; Fitque Leonina, colera, fervente canina; De Mel (Melancholia) fit tristis Elefantia, tristior istis. Baldewyn the Meselle, his name so hight, ... For foul meselrie he comond with no man. John Trevisa has rendered the lepra of Glanville by “meselry,” in translating, in 1398, the treatise De Proprietatibus Rerum.—See the London edition of 1535, pp. 109-110. Non isthanc aetatem oportet pigmentum ullum attingere Neque cerussam, neque melinum, neque ullam aliam offuciam. Ille supercilium madida fuligine tactum Obliqua producit acu, pingitque trementes Attollens oculos. Demisit Nardini unam amphoram cellarius. Horace, in one of his odes addressed to Virgil (Carmina, lib. iv. c. 12), invites his brother poet to a drinking-party, provided Virgil will earn his wine by bringing some spikenard; and he declares that a small box of the perfume shall draw a whole cask of wine from the storehouses of Sulpicius. Nardo vina merebere. Nardi parvus onyx eliciet cadum Que nunc Sulpiciis accubat horreis. The onyx, or alabaster box, mentioned in these lines of Horace, was made of a kind of gypsum, and was used for containing the more precious ointments, under the belief, as we are told by Pliny (lib. xxxv. cap. 12), that this material prevented the fragrance of the ointments from being dissipated (quoniam optime servare incorrupta dicitur). In explanation of the great use of ointments among the Romans, it is to be remembered that they then formed their only vehicle for the enjoyment of perfumes, the art of distillation being altogether unknown to them. “Nec satis extremo tutantur in orbe Britanni.” THE END. Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. |