12 i.e., apparently with shells which had gathered about him as he lay in the deep.
13 This seems to be the sense of Oehler's "Nauta at tum Domino leti venerando timorem Sacrificat grates" - "grates" being in apposition with "timorem." But Migne reads: "Nautaelig; tum Domino laeti venerando timorem Sacrificant grates:"-
"The sailors then do to the reverend Lord
Gladly make grateful sacrifice of fear:"and I do not see that Oehler's reading is much better.
14 Comp. Matt. xii. 38-41; Luke xi. 29,30.
15 These words are not in the original, but are inserted (I confess) to fill up the line, and avoid ending with an incomplete verse. If, however, any one is curious enough to compare the translation, with all its defects, with the Latin, he may be somewhat surprised to find how very little alteration or adaptation is necessary in turning verse into verse.
2 See Gen. ix. 21, 22, x. 8-17.
3 Comp. 2 Pet. iii. 5-14.
4 The expression, "sinners against their own souls," in Num. xvi. 38 - where, however, the LXX. have a very different version - may be compared with this; as likewise Prov. viii. 36.
5 Whether the above be the sense of this most obscure triplet I will not presume to determine. It is at least (I hope) intelligible sense. But that the reader may judge for himself whether he can offer any better, I sugjoin the lines, which form a sentence alone, and therefore can be judged of without their context: -"Tempore sed certo Deus omnia prospectulatus,Judicat injustos, patiens ubi criminis aetasCessandi spatium vis nulla coëgerit irae."
6 Comp. Heb. i. 14. It may be as well here to inform the reader once for that prosody as well as syntax is repeatedly set at defiance in these metrical fragments; and hence, of course, arise some of the chief difficulties in dealing with them.