And with a neck untouched as many kine.
Four altars at the goddesses' high shrines
For these construct, and from their throats let drop
The hallowed blood, and in a leafy grove

The carcases themselves of th' oxen leave.

Then, when the ninth Aurore shall have displayed
Her dawn, to Orpheus his funereal dues,
Lethæan poppies, shalt thou pay, and thou
A sable ewe shalt butcher, and the grove
Visit again; Eurydice, appeased

By a slain heifer-calf, thou shalt adore."

There's no delay: he straightway puts in force
His mother's mandates. To the shrines he comes;
The indicated altars he uprears;

Four chosen bulls of eminent form he leads,
And with a neck untouched as many kine.
Then, when the ninth Aurore had ushered in
Her dawn, to Orpheus his funereal dues

He

pays, and visiteth the grove again. But here a prodigy, a sudden one,

And marvellous to be named, do they behold:-
Throughout the melted inwards of the beeves,
Bees buzzing, from within the entire womb,
And bubbling forth from out their riven sides;
And huge clouds warping on; and streaming now
Together on the tree-top, and adown

Dropping a cluster from the lither boughs.

760

770

780

Line 766. Milton in the same way repeats the execution of orders

in the words of the orders themselves; P. L. b. x. end.

778. We are indebted to the genius of Milton for this exquisite metaphor, which he applies to the motion of locusts, in illustrating that of the wicked angels, when flocking at the summons of Satan :

THESE strains upon the management of fields
And cattle I was chanting, and on trees;
While mighty Cæsar at Euphrates deep
Thunders in battle, and a conqueror

Through acquiescing tribes is dealing laws,
And aims to tread a path to reach the Heaven.
Me, Virgil, at that time was used to nurse
The sweet Parthenope, while rioting
In the employments of a fameless ease;
Who have the madrigals of shepherds played,

And, venturous with youth, thee, Tityrus, sung
Beneath a canopy of spreading beech.

790

Waved round the coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like night, and darken'd all the land of Nile."

Paradise Lost, b. i.

If it be thought too great a liberty to render trahi by a neuter verb, this beautiful word must be abandoned, and the passage altered thus: And boundless clouds trailed on, &c.

In this case, too, line 84 must share a like fate, and be thus lowered : Trailed onward by the gale, &c.

Line 790. Carmina lusi: so in Ecl. i. v. 10; Ludere quæ vellem.

THE ENEID.

BOOK I.

* That [bard] am I, who whilom tuned his lay
On the slight reed, and, issuing from the woods,
Compelled the neighbouring country to submit
Unto the husbandman, though greedy [he]:-
A welcome task to swains: but now Mars' dread

* Those writers seem to have been hasty in their criticisms upon these first four lines, who pronounce them unworthy of the author of the Eneid. Able scholars are found to think them thoroughly Virgilian; and Forbiger thinks he sees plain evidence of genuineness in the word at. Had the writers in question, instead of saying that the passage was not Virgil's, said that it was a weak introduction to an epic poem, they would have been quite right; and doubtless no one would have been happier to agree with them than Virgil himself. It seems highly probable that he sent the lines in dispute, along with the work itself, to some friend, who showed them to others, and in this way they obtained currency as the unquestioned production of his pen. Thus from their genuineness, coupled with their great ingenuity, they crept into the text, from which they were most likely ejected by Tucca and Varius, though some manuscripts retained them still. One thing is pretty certain,-that Virgil, whose discretion and taste must be admitted, even by those who think meanly of his creative powers, would

ARMS and the man I sing, who from the coasts

Of Troy, a wanderer, erst came by fate

To Italy and Lavinian shores. Much he

Was tossed both on the lands and sea, through might
Of heavenly powers, for the rankling wrath

Of ruthless Juno; ay, and much he bore
Through war, till he a city built, and brought
His gods to Latium; whence the Latin race,
And. Alban sires, and walls of lofty Rome.

O Muse, the reasons unto me rehearse,
What godhead outraged, or the queen of gods,

10

never, with his great original before him, have begun the Æneid with an Ille ego. At all events, Persius did not believe in the puerility, if he ever heard of it.

This opening reminds one of the introduction to the Faerie Queene: "Lo! I, the man whose Muse whylome did maske,

As time her taught, in lowly shepheards weeds,

Am now enforst, a farre unfitter taske,

For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine oaten reeds,

And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds," &c.

See also Shepheards Calender, October, 55.

Line 4. Cowley compares the sufferings of Charles the Second to those of Æneas, philosophising, more suo:

"But, in the cold of want, and storms of adverse chance,

They harden his young virtue by degrees:

The beauteous drop first into ice does freeze,

And into solid crystal next advance.

His murder'd friends and kindred he does see,
And from his flaming country flee:

Much is he tost at sea, and much at land;
Does long the force of angry gods withstand :
He does long troubles and long wars sustain,
Ere he his fatal birthright gain.

With no less time and labour can
Destiny build up such a man,
Who's with sufficient virtue filled
His ruin'd country to rebuild."

Ode on Restoration.

At what a fretting, should have forced a man,
Marked for religiousness, to undergo

Mishaps so many, meet so many toils.

[Dwells there] such grievous wrath in heavenly souls?
There was an ancient city,-colonists

Of Tyre possessed it,—Carthage, opposite
To Italy and Tiber's mouths afar,
Rich in resources, and in the pursuits

Of war most fierce; the which is Juno said

Singly above all lands to have patronised,

Her Samos less esteemed. Here stood her arms,

Her chariot here; the goddess even then

Both aims and hugs [her aim], that this should prove,
If it in any wise would fates allow,

Unto the nations sovereignty ['s seat].

But still she had heard that from the Trojan blood
A strain would be descended, which one day
Would raze her Tyrian towers; that hence a race,
Wide bearing empire and in battle haught,
Should come for Libya's ruin; that the Weirds
Did thus ordain. Saturnia, dreading this,
And mindful of the long-continued war,
Which erst at Troja she had carried on,
For sake of her beloved Argos: nor
Had even yet the reasons for her wrath,
And her fell sufferings faded from her mind;
Bides treasured deep within her soul th' award
Of Paris, and her slighted beauty's wrong,

20

30

Line 15. So Milton, Par. Lost, b. vi:

"In heavenly Spirits could such perverseness dwell?"

35. Argis may perhaps be an adjective here, though in an unusual form,