Monday, March 11, 2019
Topographical Minutiae
E.K. Rand (1871-1945), A Walk to Horace's Farm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), pp. 6-7:
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It is of interest to inquire just where the Sabine Farm was situated. Readers of Horace's Odes sometimes do not care to know; the imagination of the poet supplies material for a fairyland of their own constructing, and hunting about in the Classical Atlas is not exciting or remunerative work. But to the traveller in Italy, to one who treads those sacred places known to him only from books before, no topographical minutiae seem irrelevant. The past is enlivened in an indescribable way, for the discovery of actual sites not only gratifies scientific curiosity, but supplies new food for the imagination.
