That as a girlond seemes to deck the locks

Of some faire bride, brought forth with pompous showes
Out of her bowre, that many flowers strowes:
So through the flowry dales she tumbling downe
Through many woods and shady coverts flowes,
That on each side her silver channell crowne."

ECLOGUE VI. SILENUS.

THE first [that] in the Syracusan strain
Deigned to disport, nor blushed to haunt the woods,
[Was] our Thalia. What time I would sing
Of kings and battles, Cynthius twitched my ear,
And warned: "A shepherd, Tityrus, it behoves
To feed fat sheep, to chant a flimsy lay."
Now I, (for unto thee shall they abound,
Who may thy praises, Varus, long to tell,
And thy grim wars record,) will exercise
The rural Muse upon my slender reed.
Not [strains] unbidden do I chant. Howe'er,
If any wight e'en these, if any wight,

By fancy charmed, shall read,-O Varus, thee
Our tamarisks, thee all the grove shall sing;
Nor any page to Phœbus soother is

Than that which has the name of Phoebus traced

10

Line 6. I am not aware that any classical British author applies the literal meaning of deductum, "thin-spun," to compositions of any kind. Milton uses it of life, but evidently with reference to the trite idea of life's thread. If the metaphor must be abandoned in the translation, many words offer themselves for acceptance, of which perhaps homely" is as good as any.

Addison, in speaking of Spenser, whom he had not enough of poetic taste to admire, says:

"The long-spun allegories fulsome grow."

Pope employs the word which is used in the version :

"Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines."

Prologue to Satires.

Upon its front. Proceed, Pierian Maids.

The striplings Chromis and Mnasylus spied
Silenus lying in a cave in sleep,

With yestern Bacchus swollen through his veins,
As aye. His garlands at some distance lay,
Having but fallen off his head, and hung
His heavy beaker by its handle worn.
Assailing him, (for oft the agèd man

With promise of a song had mocked them both,)
They throw upon him fetters, [forged]
Out of the very garlands. Unto them
Doth Ægle, as their comrade, join herself,

And on the startled wights comes by surprise,-
Ægle, of Naiad maids most fair; and now,
As he looks [up], with blood-red mulberries
His forehead and his temples she bepaints.
He, laughing at the trick,—" Why fetters tie ?”
Exclaims: "Release me, lads; it is enough
That it is seen to have been in your power.

The songs which list ye, hear: the songs for you;
For her shall be another kind of pay."

66

Line 22. Does it not seem very objectionable to render procul, with Servius, near?" It is not pretended that Virgil ever uses the word in this sense; while it is very questionable whether it is ever so employed by any other author. Nor does it seem necessary to have recourse to so violent a measure.

I take the sense to be this. Silenus, more suo, had taken too much wine, and became intoxicated. He got up, perhaps to replenish his tankard, and reeled, so that the garlands fell on the ground tantum, merely, without receiving any damage. However, he succeeded in making his way so far, that the distance which he had staggered might be designated by procul. Here he fell, or, finding his inability to proceed, thought it best to lie down ; yet not so drunk but that he managed to keep the tankard in his hand, though it rested on the ground by his side, tilted half over. Here he dropped asleep, and in this condition was found by the waggish Fauns and the arch Naiad.

At once he 'gins himself.

sang

Then, sooth, in time
Both Fauns and savage beasts you might behold
Disporting; then stiff oaks waving their crests.
Neither so much in Phoebus doth delight
Parnassus' crag, nor so much Rhodope
And Ismarus at Orpheus marvel. For he
How through the vasty void had been combined
Th' elements both of lands, and air, and sea,
And at the same time of transparent fire;
How all beginnings from these rudiments,
The pulpy globe, too, of the world itself,
Together grew; then how the ground began
To harden, and the ocean to embar
Within the deep apart, and by degrees

To take the shapes of things; and [how] anon
The lands at glimmering of a new-born sun
Were in amaze, and from a greater height
From the uplifted clouds the showers fall;
When forests first begin to spring, and when
Through the unweeting mountains here and there
Rove living creatures. Next doth he relate
The stones by Pyrrha cast, the Saturn reign,
And fowls of Caucasus, and Prometheus' rape.
To these he adds, at what spring left behind,

The seamen had on Hylas called aloud,
That all the strand with "Hylas, Hylas," rang.

Line 39. So Piers says of Cuddie: Spenser, Sh. Cal. Oct. 25: "Soone as thou gynst to sette thy notes in frame,

O how the rural routes to thee do cleave!"

63. "Or that same daintie lad, which was so deare
To great Alcides, that, whenas he dyde,
He wailed womanlike with many a teare,
And every wood and every valley wyde

He filld with Hylas name; the nymphes eke Hylas cryde."

Spenser, Faerie Queene, iii. 12, 7.

And, blessed if there never had been herds,
Pasiphae he comforts in her love

For the young snowy bull. Ah! hapless dame,
What frenzy thee has seized! The Protides
With their fantastic lowings filled the fields;
But, ne'ertheless, not one of them pursued
So scandalous embracements of the beasts,
Although she for her neck had feared the plough,
And oft on her smooth brow had sought for horns.
Ah! hapless dame! You now on mountains rove;
He, cushioned on his side, [all] snowy white,
With downy martagon, beneath a dun
Holm-oak, on yellowing grasses chews the cud,
Or courts some female in the mighty herd.
Shut, nymphs, Dictaan nymphs, now shut
The forest-passes, if by any chance

The truant footsteps of my bull should come
Across my eyes.
Or charmed by verdant grass,
Or following the droves, some cows, perchance,
May lead him through to the Gortynian stalls.
Then he the damsel sings, who was amazed
At th' apples of the Hesperides;

He next the sister-train of Phaeton

70

80

Line 75. It may as well be remarked here, once for all, that there is no pretension of determining what is meant by the terms which stand for plants. I have usually translated hyacinthus by "martagon," only because the learned and careful Martyn is so positive that this is the flower intended; and to call it "hyacinth" would be simply to mislead. Whatever hyacinthus meant, it is certain that it did not mean “hyacinth." But I confess that the "imperial martagon" would not form exactly the sort of bed that a sensible bull would be likely to choose. In autumn, at least, he might nearly as well select a couch of sticks. 86. Spenser thus finely alludes to the story of Phaeton :

"As when the firie-mouthed steedes, which drew

The Sunne's bright wayne to Phaeton's decay,