Of free and easy conversation,
Or in a grave dispute he'd wear
The solemn expert's learned air
And keep to silent meditation;
And how the ladies' eyes he lit
With flashes of his sudden wit!
6
The Latin vogue today is waning,
And yet I'll say on his behalf,
He had sufficient Latin training
To gloss a common epigraph,
Cite Juvenal in conversation, P
ut
And he recalled, at least in part,
A line or two of Virgil's art.
He lacked, it's true, all predilection
For rooting in the ancient dust
Of history's annals full of must,
But knew by heart a fine collection
Of anecdotes of ages past:
F
rom Romulus to Tuesday last.
7
Lacking the fervent dedication
That sees in sounds life's highest quest,
He never knew, to our frustration,
A dactyl from an anapest.
Theocritus and Homer bored him,
But reading Adam Smith restored him,
And economics he knew well;
Which is to say that he could tell
The ways in which a state progresses
The actual things that make it thrive,
And why for gold it need not strive,
When
His father never understood
And mortgaged all the land he could.
8
I have no leisure for retailing
The sum of all our hero's parts,
But where his genius proved unfailing,
The thing he'd learned above all arts,
What from his prime had been his pleasure,
His only torment, toil, and treasure,
What occupied, the livelong day,
His languid spirit's fretful play
Was love itself, the art of ardour,
Which Ovid sang in ages past,
And for which song he paid at last
