1When I try to rival your verses, it is then above all that I find out how good they are. 1For just as painters rarely reproduce a beautiful and perfect face except for the worse, so I slip and fall short of this original. 2All the more do I urge you to bring out as many as possible, which all may long to imitate, but none, or very few, can. 2Farewell.
Lectitō › Pliny the Younger › Letters, Book 5
Pliny · Epistulae V
Pliny, Letter 5.15
Admiring a friend's verses
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Pliny, Epistulae V. Latin text: the Perseus digital text of Pliny's Letters, public domain; digital text from the Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA. Word analysis: drafted by our own tagger (trained on the hand-checked texts on this site), with every doubtful word checked by hand. English translation and section titles: written for this app, each checked against the Latin by a second reader.