Begin with me, my pipe, Mænalian strains.
Fell Love hath taught a mother to distain
Her hands all over with her children's blood:
O mother, thou wert also barbarous !
More barbarous was the mother, or that boy
More impious? More impious that boy;-
O mother, thou wert also barbarous!

Begin with me, my pipe, Mænalian strains.
Let now e'en wolf unbidden fly the sheep;
Let golden apples churlish oaks produce;
Let with the daffodil the alder bloom;
Let fatty amber from their bark distil

The tamarisks; and screech-owls vie with swans;
Be Tityrus Orpheus, Orpheus in the woods,-

Among the dolphins an Arion be.

Begin with me, my pipe, Mænalian strains.

Let all things e'en mid-sea become. Farewell, ye woods;

I headlong from a skyish mountain-peak

Upon the billows shall be borne adown:

This latest present of a dying man.

Take thou.

Cease, pipe, now cease Mænalian strains.

70

80

Line 65. The unprejudiced reader, who is not absurdly wedded to Virgil, as Dr. Trapp and others, can hardly help going along with Heyne in his caustic remarks on verses 49, 50. However, he seems too hasty in expunging them from the text. Why may not Virgil have written bad lines as well as any other poet? Milton, who was vastly his superior in genius, has written scores of them. No doubt the former is a most strikingly correct writer; but his Æneid shows that he was not incapable of weaknesses.

In the 49th verse, instead of the awkward supply of magis before improbus, may not puer improbus ille be one phrase? Vide Geo. iii. 431, Hic improbus; En. v. 397, Improbus iste. So that the translation would run: Fell Love taught, &c. You, mother, were barbarous as well as he (Love). Was the mother the more barbarous, or that wicked boy? That wicked boy was (more barbarous); you, mother, were barbarous too, (though he more so).

These Damon: what Alphesibous did reply, Pierians, sing: we all things cannot all.

ALPHESIBUS.

Bring water forth, and with a downy wreath
Festoon these altars, and fat vervains burn,
And the male frankincense; that to derange
My paramour's sound mind with sorcerous rites
I may essay: nought here, save spells, there lacks.

90

Bring from the city home, my spells, my Daphnis bring. Spells e'en from heaven can unsphere the moon ; Circe by spells transshaped Ulysses' mates;

Th' cold snake in meadows is by charming burst.

Bring from the city home, my spells, my Daphnis bring.

In the first place, round thee these triple threads,

Line 87. The power of magic is described with infinite beauty by Shakspeare in his Tempest, v. 1:

"Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves;

And ye, that on the sands with printless foot,
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him,
When he comes back; you demy-puppets, that
By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms; that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid
(Weak masters though ye be,) I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-bas'd promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar; graves, at my command,
Have wak'd their sleepers; oped, and let them forth
By my so potent art."

89. Or:

Bring home from town, my spells, my Daphnis bring.

94. There is a marked allusion to these magical rites in Spenser's

With threefold colour chequered, do I twine,
And thrice this image round the altars lead:
In an odd number deity delights.

Bring from the city home, my spells, my Daphnis bring. Tie thou, O Amaryllis, in three knots Three colours; tie them, Amaryllis, now;

And say, "The chains of Venus do I tie."

100

Bring from the city home, my spells, my Daphnis bring.
As doth this clay grow hard, and as this wax
Discandies at the one and the same fire,—

So Daphnis by our love. Strew salted meal,
And with bitumen kindle crackling bays.

Me felon Daphnis burns, in Daphnis I this bay.

Bring from the city home, my spells, my Daphnis bring. May such a passion Daphnis [seize], as when

A heifer, spent in seeking the young bull
Through lawns and lofty groves, hard by a rill
Of water on the verdant sedge sinks down,

Distracted, nor remembers to give way

110

account of Glauce's efforts in behalf of Britomart, though her object was the exact reverse of Virgil's witch,-" to undoe her daughter's love:" “Then, taking thrise three heares from off her head,

Them trebly breaded in a threefold lace,

And round about the pots mouth bound the thread;

And, after having whispered a space

Certein sad words with hollow voice and bace,

Shee to the virgin sayd, thrise sayd she itt:

'Come, daughter, come; come, spit upon my face;
Spitt thrise upon me, thrise upon me spitt:

Th' uneven nomber for this business is most fitt.""

F. Q. iii. 2, 50.

Line 97. So Dame Partlett to Chanticleer: Dryden, Cock and Fox,

187, 8:

"Take just three worms, nor under nor above,

Because the gods unequal numbers love."

113, 14.

This construction is imitated by Dryden, Annus Mir.

st. 253:

To the late night:-him such a passion seize,
Nor let his cure be a concern to me.

Bring from the city home, my spells, my Daphnis bring. These garments whilom the arch-traitor left

For me, dear pledges of himself, which I

Now at the very entrance, earth, to you
Consign; these pledges Daphnis owe to me.

120

Bring from the city home, my spells, my Daphnis bring. These herbs and poisons these, in Pontus culled, To me gave Moris' self: full many grow In Pontus. Oft with these I have Moeris [seen] Become a wolf, and hide him in the woods; Oft spirits summon from their lowest graves, And seeded crops elsewhither seen transport.

Bring from the city home, my spells, my Daphnis bring. Bear th' ashes, Amaryllis, out of doors,

And in a running brook and o'er thy head
Throw them, nor do thou cast a look behind.
With these I Daphnis will assail; nought he

Of deities, nought of my spells doth reck.

130

Bring from the city home, my spells, my Daphnis bring. Behold! while I delay to bear them forth,

The very ashes of their own accord

Have on the altars seized with bickering flames.
Auspicious may it prove! It something is

For certain; Hylax, too, at th' entrance barks.
Do we believe it? Or do they who love,

140

"The days were all in this lost labour spent ;

And when the weary king gave place to night," &c.

Line 139. This version of certe is used by Milton in Comus:

"For certain

Either some like us night-foundered here."

Themselves unto themselves imagine dreams?

Spare, spells, now spare him; Daphnis from the city comes.

And by Shakspeare, Merchant of Venice, v. 1:

"For here I read for certain that my ships

Are safely come to road."

Line 142. Or:

Spare, spells, now spare him; Daphnis comes from town.