A river here he viewed so lovely bright, Nor kept a sand concealed from human sight. But dealt enriching moisture all around, The fruitful banks with cheerful verdure crowned And well deserved to be reputed fair. 'Bright youth," she cries," whom all thy features prove A god, and, if a god, the god of love; But if a mortal, blest thy nurse's breast, Blest are thy parents, and thy sisters blest: But, oh! how blest! how more than blest thy bride, Allied in bliss, if any yet allied. If so, let mine the stolen enjoyments be; If not, behold a willing bride in me." The boy knew nought of love, and, touched with shame, He strove, and blusht, but still the blush became: In rising blushes still fresh beauties rose; The sunny side of fruit such blushes shows, And such the moon, when all her silver white Receive a glossy lustre from the glass. "He's mine, he's all my own," the Naïad cries, And twists her legs, and writhes about her wings. The restless boy still obstinately strove "And why, coy youth," she cries, "why thus unkind! Oh may we never, never part again!" So prayed the nymph, nor did she pray in vain : Last in one face are both their faces joined, A single body with a double sex. The boy, thus lost in woman, now surveyed Supple, unsinewed, and but half a man! The heavenly parents answered, from on high, NOTES ON SOME OF THE FOREGOING STORIES IN OVID'S ON THE STORY OF PHAETON, p. 87. THE story of Phaeton is told with a greater air of majesty and grandeur than any other in all Ovid. It is, indeed, the most important subject he treats of, except the deluge; and I cannot but believe that this is the conflagration he hints at in the first book. Esse quoque in fatis reminiscitur affore tempus Quo mare, quo tellus, correptaque regia cœli (though the learned apply those verses to the future burning of the world,) for it fully answers that description, if the Cœli miserere tui, circumspice utrumque, Fumat uterque polus. Fumat uterque polus-comes up to correptaque regia cœli-Besides, it is Ovid's custom to prepare the reader for a following story, by giving such intimations of it in a foregoing one, which was more particularly necessary to be done before he led us into so strange a story as this is he is now upon. P. 87, 1. 7.-For in the portal, &c.] We have here the picture of the universe drawn in little. Balænarumque prementem Egeona suis immunia terga lacertis. Ægeon makes a diverting figure in it. Facies non omnibus una Nec diversa tamen: qualem decet esse sororum. The thought is very pretty, of giving Doris and her daughters such a difference in their looks as is natural to different persons, and yet such a likeness as showed their affinity. Terra viros, urbesque gerit, sylvasque, ferasque, Fluminaque, et nymphas, et cætera numina ruris. The less important figures are well huddled together in the promiscuous description at the end, which very well represents what painters call a group. Circum caput omne micantes Deposuit radios; propiusque accedere jussit. P. 88, 1. 21. And flung the blaze, &c.] It gives us a great image of Phoebus, that the youth was forced to look on him distance, and not able to approach him till he had lain1 1 Had lain aside.] He uses lain for laid very improperly here and elsewhere, on the idea, I suppose, that the verb lay has two perfect participles; just as the verb load has loaded and loaden. But the fact is otherwise and the reason is not far to seek. The double d in the regular participle "loaded," having an ill sound, the ear gradually introduces loaden, which our nicer writers, and amongst the rest our author, prefers to loaded, though the last is not entirely disused. There was not the same reason for changing laid to lain; and the use has never prevailed: if it had, “had lain aside" is, by accident better than "had laid aside. aside the circle of rays that cast such a glory about his head. And, indeed, we may every where observe in Ovid, that he never fails of a due loftiness in his ideas, though he wants it in his words. And this I think infinitely better than to have sublime expressions and mean thoughts, which is generally the true character of Claudian and Statius. But this is not considered by them who run down Ovid in the gross, for a low, middle way of writing. What can be more simple and unadorned than his description of Enceladus in the sixth book? Nititur ille quidem, pugnatque resurgere sæpe, But the image we have here is truly great and sublime, of a giant vomiting out a tempest of fire, and heaving up all Sicily, with the body of an island upon his breast, and a vast promontory on either arm. There are few books that have had worse commentators on them than Ovid's Metamorphoses. Those of the graver sort have been wholly taken up in the mythologies, and think they have appeared very judicious, if they have shown us out of an old author that Ovid is mistaken in a pedigree, or has turned such a person into a wolf that ought to have been made a tiger. Others have employed themselves on what never entered into the poet's thoughts, in adapting a dull moral to every story, and making the persons of his poems to be only nicknames for such virtues or vices: particularly the pious commentator, Alexander Ross, has dived deeper into our author's design than any of the rest; for he discovers in him the greatest mysteries of the Christian religion, and finds almost in every page some typical representation of the world, the flesh, and the devil. But if these writers have gone too deep, others have been wholly employed in the surface, most of them serving only to help out a school-boy in the construing part; or if they go out of their way, it is only to mark out the gnome of the author, as they call them, which are generally the heaviest pieces of a and that meliority of sound induced, no doubt, our delicate writer, who was all ear, to prefer " lain," in this place, to laid, without reflecting that the established practice was, for good reason, against him.-" Lain" is, properly, the perfect participle of lie-laid, of lay. |