With moistful poison, thrills her senses through, 500 And round her bones inweaves the flame; nor yet

Her mind throughout her bosom felt the fire;

In gentler strain, and in the customed mode

Of mothers, spake she, shedding many a

tear

Over her daughter and the Phrygian match: "To Trojan exiles is Lavinia given

[In marriage] to be led, O thou her sire? Nor dost compassionate alike thy child, And thy own self? Nor dost compassionate

A mother, whom the traitor will forsake With the first northern breeze, a pirateknave, 511 Seeking the depths,-the damsel carried off? Sooth not on this wise doth the Phrygian swain

Pierce Lacedæmon, and hath borne away Ledæan Helen to the Trojan towns! Where is thy saintly faith? where old regard

For thy own [friends], and right hand deigned so oft

To kinsman Turnus? If a son-in-law 518
For the Latini from [some] foreign land
Is sought, and that is settled, and on thee
The mandates of thy father Faunus weigh;
Sooth every land, which independent lies
Distinct from sway of ours, a foreign [land]
I deem, and that the gods intend it thus.
E'en Turnus, if his family's first source
Be backward traced, hath Inachus,
Acrisius, too, his fathers, and [his town,]
Central Mycena." When by these her
words

Latinus having vainly tried, she sees

That firm he stands opposed, and deep had sunk 530

Into her inwards the adder's rageful bane, And wholly through her spreads; then sooth unblest,

By monster goblins roused, past wont she

raves

Crazed through the boundless city as at times,

A top that flies beneath the twisted thong,

502. Or: "through her whole breast caught up the fire."

535. Surely this is no elegant comparison, though it cannot be more elegantly expressed. The idea of a queen racing about the town, like a whip-top, is ludicrous, if not mean. Shakespeare draws an illustration from school-boy sports, which is more dignified, and far more ingenious:

Of Teucer, and the [hymeneal] torches stay;

550 "Evoe Bacchus," screaming, yelling forth, "That thou alone art worthy of the maid; For that the tender ivy-shafts she takes For thee, that thee she circles in the dance, For thee she fosters her devoted hair." The rumor flies; and, by the Furies fired Within their bosom, drives the selfsame glow

The matrons all at once strange roofs to seek.

Their homes have they abandoned; to the winds

They give their necks and locks. But other [dames] 560 With thrilling shrieks the welkin fill, and wield

Vine-girdled lances, wrapped about in skins.

Herself among the midmost in her heat
A blazing pine upbears, and chants the

match

Of Turnus and her daughter, rolling round A blood-shot eye, and sudden fiercely cries:

"Ho! list ye Latin dames, where'er ye be :
If in your duteous spirits any love
For your unfortunate Amata dwells,
If some concernment for a mother's right

"In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft,
I shot his fellow of the selfsame flight
The selfsame way, with more advised watch,
To find the other forth; and by advent'ring both,
I oft found both: I urge this childhood proof,
Because what follows is pure innocence.
I owe you much; and, like a wilful youth,
That which I owe is lost: but if
you please
To shoot another arrow that self way
Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt,
As I will watch the aim, or to find both,
Or bring your latter hazard back again,
And thankfully rest debtor for the first."

The Merchant of Venice, i. 1.

Deep preys upon you, loose your tressy bands, 571

Take up the orgy-rites along with me." Suchlike 'mid woods, 'mid wild beasts' lonely [lairs]

Allecto baits the queen on every side With goads of Bacchus. When she seemed enough

First transports to have whetted, and the plan

And all Latinus' court o'erthrown; straight hence

The sullen goddess on her raven wings
Is wafted to the bold Rutulian's walls,--
Which city Danae is said t' have built 580
For her Acrisian settlers,-onward borne
Upon the sweepy southern gale. The spot
Was Ardea erst by our forefathers called;
And Ardea still remains a noble name;
But its prosperity is of the past.
Here Turnus in his stately palace now
In ebon night was snatching mid repose.
Allecto doffs grim face and rageful limbs ;
Transshapes her into haggish lineaments,
And scores her frowsy brow with wrinkles;
dons

590

Hoar tresses with a fillet; then inweaves
A sprig of olive; Calybe becomes
The priestess-crone of Juno and her fane,
And to the youth before his eyes herself
With accents these presents: "O Turnus,
wilt thou bear

That toils so many should be spent in vain, And that thy sceptre should be signed away

To Dardan emigrants? The king to thee The match and dowry, purchased by thy blood,

Denies, and for his realm a foreign heir
Is sought. Go now! to thankless jeopardy
Expose thee, flouted [man]! the Tyrrhene
ranks

602

Lay prostrate; shelter Latins by a peace. These e'en to thee, while thou in still of night

Shouldst lie, th' all-powerful Saturnian [queen]

Herself hath bid me openly to speak. Then rouse thee up! and that the youth be armed,

And from the gates marched out, thou, blithe at arms,

Make ready; and the Phrygian chieftains, who

Have ta'en their station in the lovely flood, And their bepainted barks to ashes burn. The sovereign power of the heav'nly [gods] 612

Commands. Let king Latinus e'en himself,

Save that to grant the match, and with his word

Comply, he gives assurance,-Turnus feel, And at the last make proof of him in arms."

The youth, here jeering the divineress, Thus op'ning words from lip in turn replies: 'The news, that ships to Tiber's wave are borne,

66

Hath not, as thou imaginest, escaped 620 Mine ears; (forge not for me such great alarms ;)

Nor royal Juno mindless is of us. But, crushed by dotage, and past bearing truth,

Thy eld, O mother, worries thee with cares All idly, and amid the arms of kings Mocks a divineress with phantom dread. Thy province is, the statues of the gods, And temples, to defend; let wars and

peace

623. "Dotard,' said he, 'let be thy deepe advise ;
Seemes that through many yeares thy wits thee
faile,
And that weake eld hath left thee nothing wise.""
Spenser, F. Q., ii. 3, 16.
"But thou, since Nature bids, the world resign;
'Tis now thy daughter's daughter's time to shine."
Parnell, Elegy to an Old Beauty.

"I pardon thee th' effects of doting age ;
Vain doubts, and idle cares, and over-caution
The second non-age of a soul more wise;
But now decay'd and sunk into the socket,
Peeping by fits, and giving feeble light."
Dryden, Don Sebastian, v. 1.

;

624. "Thy brows and cheeks are smooth as waters be

When no breath troubles them: believe me, boy, Care seeks out wrinkled brows and hollow eyes, And builds himself caves to abide in them.

Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, ii. 3. Turnus seems scarce to have remembered that "Who scorns at eld peels off his own young hairs." Ben Jonson, Sad Shepherd, ii. 2.

At such his words Allecto into wrath 630 Blazed out. But in the stripling, as he

speaks,

A sudden shiver seizes on his joints; Stiff stood his eyeballs: with so many snakes

The Fury hisses, and so dread a shape Presents it's form]. Then, rolling eyes of fire,

As falters he, and further [words] he seeks To speak, she thrust him back, and lifted

up Twain serpents from her tresses, and her thongs

Made ring, and these subjoins with rageful mouth :

"Behold! by dotage I am crushed, whom eld, 640 Past bearing truth, amid the arms of kings Bemocks with phantom dread! Look thou to these:

Here am I from the awful Sisters' seat; Battles and death I carry in my hand." Thus having spoken, at the youth she launched

A brand, and, smoking with a sooty light, Her torches fastened deep within his breast. His sleep huge shudd'ring breaks, and bones and joints

Sweat, bursten forth from his whole body, bathes.

"Arms!" mad he yells; for arms through couch and halls 650 Storms a passion for the

He searches. sword,

635. "But she thereat was wroth, that for despight The glauncing sparkles through her bever glared, And from her eies did flash out fiery light, Like coles that through a silver censer sparkle bright." Spenser, F. Q., v. 6, 38. 645. "Some Fury, From burning Acheron, snatch'd a sulphur brand, That smok'd with hate, the parent of red murder, And threw it in her bosom." Massinger, Parliament of Love, v. 1.

650.

"A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!" Shakespeare, K. Richard III., v. 6.

651. "O save me from the tumult of the soul, From the wild beasts within! For circling sands, When the swift whirlwind whelms them o'er the lands;

The roaring deeps that to the clouds arise, While through the storm the darting lightning flies;

The monster brood to which this land gives birth;

The blazing city and the gaping earth;
All deaths, all tortures, in one pang combined,
Are gentle to the tempest of the mind."

Masinissa, in Thomson's Sophonisba, i. 5.

As when with mighty din, a fire of twigs Is laid beneath a surging caldron's sides, And with the heat up leap the waters;

The spirits of the peasantry for war.
The hart was of surpassing shape, and huge

672. So Drayton of "Mischief:"
"She, with a sharp sight and a meagre look,
Was always prying where she might do ill,
In which the fiend continual pleasure took,
(Her starved body plenty could not fill)
Searching in every corner, every nook;
With winged feet, too swift to work her will,

Furnish'd with deadly instruments she went, Of ev'ry sort, to wound where so she meant. "Having a vial fill'd with baneful wrath, (Brought from Cocytus by that cursed sprite) Which in her pale hand purposely she hath, And drops the poison upon every wight." The Barons' Wars, ii. 4-6. "Now

682.

690. "At early dawn the youth his journey took,
And many a mountain pass'd and valley wide,
Then reach'd the wild; where, in a flowery nook,
And seated on a mossy stone, he spied
An ancient man: his harp lay him beside.
A stag sprung from the pasture at his call,
And, kneeling, lick'd the wither'd hand that tied
A wreath of woodbine round his antlers tall,
And hung his lofty neck with many a flow'ret
small."
Beattie, Minstrel, b. ii. 25.

702. "But now the monarch murderer comes in, Destructive man! whom Nature would not arme, As when in madness mischief is foreseen,

We leave it weaponless for fear of harme.
"For she defenceless made him, that he might
Less readily offend; but art armes all,
From single strife makes us in numbers fight;
And by such art this royall stagg did fall.

"He weeps till grief does even his murd'rers pierce : Grief which so nobly through his anger strove, That it deserv'd the dignity of verse,

And had it words, as humanly would move. "Thrice from the ground his vanquish'd head he rear'd,

And with last looks his forrest walks did view; Where sixty summers he had rul'd the heard,

And where sharp dittany now vainly grew : "Whose hoary leaves no more his wounds shall heale;

For with a sigh (a blast of all his breath) That viewless thing, call'd life, did from him steale, And with their bugle hornes they winde his death." Davenant, Gondibert, i. 2, 52–6.

The belly, and along the flank, careered
The arrow.
But the wounded beast within
His well-known shelter homeward fled,
and passed

Groaning beneath the cotes, and with his plaint, 709 Bloody and suitor-like, filled all the house. First sister Silvia, smiting with her hands

706. Sackville introduces a wounded hart, to illustrate the "griefe of conscynce :' "Like to the dere that stryken with the dart Withdrawes himselfe into some secrete place, And feeling green the wound about his hart, Startles with panges tyl he fall on the grasse, And in great feare lyes gasping there a space, Furth braying sighes as though eche pange had brought

The present death which he doeth dread so oft." Complaynt of Henrye D. of Buckingham, st. 34.

Not very dissimilarly, Pope :

"What are the falling rills, the pendent shades,
The morning bowers, the evening colonnades,
But soft recesses for th' uneasy mind
To sigh unheard in to the passing wind!
So the struck deer, in some sequester'd part,
Lies down to die (the arrow in his heart);
There hid in shades, and wasting day by day,
Inly he bleeds, and pants his soul away."
A Fragment.

711. Silvia was as tender-hearted as the Prioresse in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales: "Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde With rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel brede. But sore wept she if on of hem were dede, Or if men smote it with a yerde smert : And all was conscience and tendre herte." Chaucer.

Thyrsis, in a Bucolic of Herrick's, is equally miserable from a similar cause:

"I have lost my lovely steer,

That to me was far more dear
Than these kine which I milk here;
Broad of forehead, large of eye,
Party-colour'd like a pie,
Smooth in each limb as a die;
Clear of hoof, and clear of horn,
Sharply pointed like a thorn;
With a neck by yoke unworn,

From the which hung down by strings,
Balls of cowslips, daisy rings,

Interplac'd with ribbonings:

Pardon, Lacon, if I weep;

Tears will spring where woes are deep." Hesperides: Pastoral and Descriptive, x. Andrew Marvell has a charming poem on the like subject:

"The wanton troopers riding by,

Have shot my Fawn, and it will dye.
Ungentle men! they cannot thrive,
Who kill'd thee. Thou ne'er didst alive
Them any harm: alas! nor cou'd
Thy death yet do them any good."
"With sweetest milk and sugar first
I it at mine own fingers nurs'd;
And as it grew, so every day

It wax'd more white and sweet than they."
"It is a wondrous thing, how fleet
'Twas on these little silver feet!

Her arms, aid summons, and together calls The sturdy peasants. They,-for skulked the plague

Grim in the stilly forests,-unforeseen Are present; one with firebrand burnt at end

Equipped, one with the knots of weighty club:

Whate'er is found by each in narrow search, Their anger makes a weapon. Tyrrheus calls 718

With what a pretty skipping grace,
It oft would challenge me the race;
And when 't had left me far away,
'Twould stay, and run again, and stay.
For it was nimbler much than hinds,
And trod as if on the four winds.

"I have a garden of my own,

But so with roses overgrown,

And lillys, that you would it guess
To be a little wilderness;

And all the spring-time of the year
It only loved to be there.
Among the beds of lillys I

Have sought it oft, where it should lye;
Yet could not, till itself would rise,

Find it, although before mine eyes.
For in the flaxen lillys' shade
It like a bank of lillys laid.
Upon the roses it would feed,
Until its lips ev'n seem'd to bleed;

And then to me 't would boldly trip,
And print those roses on my lip.
But all its chief delight was still
On roses thus itself to fill;
And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lillys cold."
"O help! O help! I see it faint
And dye as calmly as a saint.

See how it weeps! The tears do come,
Sad, slowly, dropping like a gum.

So weeps the wounded balsam; so

The holy frankincense doth flow.
The brotherless Heliades

Melt in such amber tears as these."

The Nymph complaining for the Death of her Pawn.

"Thus as he spoke, loe! with outrageous cry 715. A thousand villeins rownd about them swarmd Out of the rockes and caves adioyning nye; Vile caitive wretches, ragged, rude, deformd, All threatning death, all in straunge manner armd; Some with unweldy clubs, some with long

speares,

Some rusty knives, some staves in fier warmd : Sterne was their looke; like wild amazed steares, Staring with hollow eies, and stiffe upstanding heares." Spenser, F. Q., ii. 9, 13. 718. So Spenser of the " 'salvage man," who rescued Calepine:

"Yet armes or weapon had he none to fight,
Ne knew the use of warlike instruments,
Save such as sudden rage him lent to smite."
F. Q., vi. 4, 4.
"Infernal discord, hideous to behold,
Hangs like its evil genius o'er the city,
And sends a snake to every vulgar breast.
From several quarters the mad rabble swarm,
Arm'd with the instruments of hasty rage,

And in confus'd disorderly array,

741

Most formidable march: their differing clamors, Together join'd, compose one deaf'ning sound; Arm, arm,' they cry."

Rowe, The Ambitious Stepmother, act v. 9-17. 727. "My poor heart trembles like a timorous leaf, Which the wind shakes upon his sickly stalk, And frights into a palsy."

Shirley, The Brothers, iv. 5. Allecto's voice produced both effects.

731. Goldsmith uses the idea to illustrate the attachment of the Swiss for their mountain-homes: "And as a child, when scaring sounds molest, Clings close and closer to the mother's breast, So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind's roar, But bind him to his native mountains more.' The Traveller. "He spake: and, to confirm his words, out flew Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze Far round illumined Hell."

741.

Milton, P. L., b. i.

"The flights of whistling darts make brown the sky, Whose clashing points strike fire, and gild the dusk." Dryden, Troilus and Cressida, v. 2.