portance of a garret, which, though they had been long obscured by the negligence and ignorance of succeeding times were well enforced by the celebrated symbol of Pythagoras, ἁνεμῶν πνεόντων τὴν ἡχὼ προσκύνει; "when the wind blows, worship its echo." This could not but be understood by his disciples as an inviolable injunction to live in a garret, which I have found frequently visited by the echo and the wind. Nor was the tradition wholly obliterated in the age of Augustus, for Tibullus evidently congratulates himself upon his garret, not without some allusion to the Pythagorean precept.
Quàm juvat immites ventos audire cubantem——— |
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How sweet in sleep to pass the careless hours, |
And it is impossible not to discover the fondness of Lucretius, an earlier writer, for a garret, in his description of the lofty towers of serene learning, and of the pleasure with which a wise man looks down upon the confused and erratick state of the world moving below him:
Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere |
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———'Tis sweet thy lab'ring steps to guide |
Dryden. |
