Note 97 — THE WORKS AND DAYS.

Make now your nests.] Grævius finds out that καλιαι may mean huts and barns, as well as nests: and in the true spirit of a verbal commentator, explodes the old interpretation of “facite nidos” and substitutes “exstruite casas:” in which he is followed, like the leader of the flock, by all the modern editors. These viri doctissimi are for ever stumbling on school-boy absurdities in their labour to be critical and sagacious: “they strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” Are the labourers to set about building huts and barns in the middle of harvest? Who does not see that “make nests,” as old Chapman properly renders it, is a mere proverbial figure? “Make hay while the sun shines.”