"Helicon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said he, "many are they who have been seduced by poetry; for, the instant a man has composed a verse in feet, and has woven a more delicate meaning into it by means of circumlocutions, he straightway concludes that he has scaled Helicon! Take those who are worn out by the distressing detail of the legal profession, for example: they often seek sanctuary in the tranquillity of poetry, as a more sheltered haven, believing themselves able ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... whom he assigns "an apartment and attendants, near the summit of snowy Olympus[31]." These Ladies, he tells us, "came to pay him a visit, and complimented him with a scepter and a branch of laurel, when he was feeding his flock on the mountain of Helicon[32]." Some tale of this kind it was usual with the Poets to invent, that the vulgar in those ages of fiction and ignorance might consider their persons as sacred, and that the offspring of their imaginations might be regarded as the ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... great eater and a fine drinker, he found himself obliged to do penance at St. Monnica's rather frugal table. But when the fever of inspiration took hold of him, he forgot eating and drinking, and in his poetical thirst he would would have drained—so his master says—all the fountains of Helicon. Licentius had a passion for versifying: "He is an almost perfect poet," wrote Augustin to Romanianus. The former rhetorician knew the world, and the way to talk to the father of a wealthy pupil, especially ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Augustan age. Public fame gave it at first to Scaliger because he was considered as the greatest poet of that time. The celebrated Peyresc[40] hinted it to that learned man, who made answer, he was too old not to be the aversion of the Virgins of Helicon; and that the verses were not written by him, but by Grotius, a most accomplished youth. Notwithstanding this declaration, Mathieu, in the Life of Henry IV. ascribes them to Scaliger. They were thought so excellent, several men of learning set about ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... wit and whimsicality, founded by Johnson himself in conjunction with Sir J. Reynolds, was the Helicon of London Letters, and the temple which the greatest talker of his age had built for himself, and in which he took care to be duly worshipped. It met at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, every ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
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