James Joyce’ use of an olfactory metaphor to describe Horace’s poetry is echoed in another simile drawing on perfumed herbs, evoking a rush of emotions.

… the dusky verses were as fragrant as though they had lain all those years in myrtle and lavender and vervain.

Source: James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964), p. 179

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