It’s great having so much literature on the Web, but I think something went wrong with the rhyme here:
bq. Unfortunately, nothing in this world is lasting; and the Golden Age was followed by another, not quite so prosperous, hence called the Silver Age, when the year was first divided into seasons, and men were obliged to toil for their daily bread.
“Succeeding times a silver age behold,
Excelling brass, but more excell’d by golf.
…Ovid (Dryden’s tr.)
The excerpt contains several misprints and is actually from a little-known verse edition of a PG Wodehouse story dealing with the genesis of the game:
“Succeeding times a silver age did scoff,
Excelling brass, but more excell
Just imagine – without Google Books you wouldn’t have known that.
Actually, it was originally typed on a golfball typewriter. Some of my students used to do that when they referred to the Golf War in their essays.
I sense a desperate need in the market for a Google Books-type service for all those books that should have been.
Where there’s goff there’s brass, as they say.