Ch. 25 p. 60 Translation

Quintus now was not a boy but a young man, ready to take up his toga virilis ("manly toga"). Very many of his friends had left the school of Orbilius and were studying (or "were keen for") rhetoric. He himself did not want to study in school any for a longer time; he was wanting to enter a wider field. Winter had passed, Spring was now here. Quintus sat in school while Orbilius was discoursing on some old poet; Quintus had studied no poet more frigid ("dull") than that one. He was not listening to Orbilius but was himself writing a poem; he had already made these verses which particularly pleased him(?).

The snows have fled, now the grasses return to the fields,
and leaves to the trees...


Problems with this Latin:

1) studeo, studere +dat. usually means "be keen on" or "be eager for" not "study" and would certainly not be used in the way shown here.

2) ei in the final qui clause seems to refer to Quintus (Horace). If so, it should be "sibi" the more natural pronoun choice in this context because context wants a reflexive to refer back to the original and notional subject, Quintus.

3) The quoted verses are from the beginning of Horace Ode 4.7, but in fact they changed the first word from diffugere to diffugerunt. The former is a rarer alternate form which means the same thing. However, when they changed the Latin word, they actually made this into bad poetry as if someone were to quote Poe's Raven with this change:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing ELSE." (instead of more)