An example of the turn on words, amongst a thousand others, is that in the last book of Ovid's "Metamorphoses:"
_Heu! quantum scelus est, in viscera, viscera condi! Congestoque avidum pinguescere corpore corpus; Alteriusque animantem animantis vivere leto._
An example on the turn both of thoughts and words, is to be found in Catullus, in the complaint of Ariadne, when she was left by Theseus;
_Tum jam nulla viro juranti fæmina credat; Nulla viri speret sermones esse fideles; Qui, dum aliquid cupiens animus prægestit apisci, Nil metuunt jurare, nihil promittere parcunt: Sed simul ac cupidæ mentis satiata libido est, Dicta nihil metuere, nihil perjuria curant._
An extraordinary turn upon the words, is that in Ovid's "Epistolæ Heroidum," of Sappho to Phaon.
_Si, nisi quæ formâ poterit te digna videri, Nulla futura tua est, nulla futura tua est._
Lastly: A turn, which I cannot say is absolutely on words, for the thought turns with them, is in the fourth Georgick of Virgil; where Orpheus is to receive his wife from hell, on express condition not to look on her till she was come on earth:
_Cùm subita incautum dementia cepit amantem; Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere Manes._
I will not burthen your lordship with more of them; for I write to a master who understands them better than myself. But I may safely conclude them to be great beauties.--I might descend also to the mechanic beauties of heroic verse; but we have yet no English _prosodia_, not so much as a tolerable dictionary, or a grammar; so that our language is in a manner barbarous; and what government will encourage any one, or more, who are capable of refining it, I know not: but nothing under a public expence can go through with it. And I rather fear a declination of the language, than hope an advancement of it in the present age.
I am still speaking to you, my lord, though, in all probability, you are already out of hearing. Nothing, which my meanness can produce, is worthy of this long attention. But I am come to the last petition of Abraham; if there be ten righteous lines, in this vast preface, spare it for their sake; and also spare the next city, because it is but a little one.
I would excuse the performance of this translation, if it were all my own; but the better, though not the greater part, being the work of some gentlemen, who have succeeded very happily in their undertaking, let their excellencies atone for my imperfections, and those of my sons. I have perused some of the satires, which are done by other hands; and they seem to me as perfect in their kind, as any thing I have seen in English verse. The common way which we have taken, is not a literal translation, but a kind of paraphrase; or somewhat, which is yet more loose, betwixt a paraphrase and imitation. It was not possible for us, or any men, to have made it pleasant any other way. If rendering the exact sense of those authors, almost line for line, had been our business, Barten Holyday had done it already to our hands: and, by the help of his learned notes and illustrations, not only Juvenal and Persius, but, what yet is more obscure, his own verses, might be understood.