Thomas Babington Macaulay,
Lays of Ancient Rome — Introduction to Horatius
“ It is not easy to understand how any modern scholar, whatever his attainments may be,—and those of Niebuhr were undoubtedly immense,—can venture to pronounce that Martial did not know the quantity of a word which he must have uttered, and heard uttered, a hundred times before he left school. Niebuhr seems also to have forgotten that Martial has fellow culprits to keep him in countenance. ”
Thomas Babington Macaulay,
Lays of Ancient Rome — Introduction to Horatius
“ In the former, Sir Hugh Montgomery is shot through the heart by a Northumbrian bowman; in the latter he is taken and exchanged for the Percy. Yet both the ballads relate to the same event, and that event which probably took place within the memory of persons who were alive when both the ballads were made. One of the Minstrels says:— "Old men that knowen the grounde well yenoughe Call it the battell of Otterburn: At Otterburn began this spurne Upon a monnyn day. ”
