Note 551 — Chapter XIV

A pleasant study, in poetic use of imagery and phrase, is the gradation from the bare and grand Lucretian simplicity of silentia noctis, through the "favour and prettiness" (slightly tautological though) of the Virgilian tacitae per amica silentia lunae, to the recovery and intensifying of magnificence in dove il sol tace. By the way, silentia (for the singular undergoes Quintilian's apology for the Latin -um) is one of the few instances in which a Latin word beats the Greek. σιγη is really inferior.