, often use _wove_ as a
participle
in place of the
harsh-sounding _woven_, a word almost incompatible with the elegance of
versification.
harsh-sounding _woven_, a word almost incompatible with the elegance of
versification.
Camoes - Lusiades
[248]
_By night our fathers' shades confess their fear,
Their shrieks of terror from the tombs we hear. --_
Camoens says, "A mortos faz espanto;" to give this elegance in English
required a paraphrase. There is something wildly great, and agreeable to
the superstition of that age, to suppose that the dead were troubled in
their graves on the approach of so terrible an army. The French
translator, contrary to the original, ascribes this terror to the ghost
of only one prince, by which this stroke of Camoens, in the spirit of
Shakespeare, is reduced to a piece of unmeaning frippery.
[249] The Muliya, a river of Morocco. --_Ed. _
[250] See the first AEneid.
[251] Goliath, the Philistine champion. --_Ed. _
[252] David, afterwards king of Israel. --_Ed. _
[253] _Though wove. _--It may perhaps be objected that this is
ungrammatical. But--
----Usus
Quem penes arbitrium est, et jus et norma loquendi.
and Dryden, Pope, etc.
, often use _wove_ as a participle in place of the
harsh-sounding _woven_, a word almost incompatible with the elegance of
versification.
[254] Hannibal, who, as a child, was compelled to swear perpetual
hostility to the Romans. --_Ed. _
[255] Where the last great battle between Hannibal and the Romans took
place, in which the Romans sustained a crushing defeat. --_Ed. _
[256] When the soldiers of Marius complained of thirst, he pointed to a
river near the camp of the Ambrones. "There," says he, "you may drink,
but it must be purchased with blood. " "Lead us on," they replied, "that
we may have something liquid, though it be blood. " The Romans, forcing
their way to the river, the channel was filled with the dead bodies of
the slain. --Vid. Plutarch's Lives.
[257] This unfortunate lady, Donna Inez de Castro, was the daughter of a
Castilian gentleman, who had taken refuge in the court of Portugal. Her
beauty and accomplishments attracted the regard of Don Pedro, the king's
eldest son, a prince of a brave and noble disposition. La Neufville, Le
Clede, and other historians, assert that she was privately married to
the prince ere she had any share in his bed. Nor was his conjugal
fidelity less remarkable than the ardour of his passion. Afraid,
however, of his father's resentment, the severity of whose temper he
knew, his intercourse with Donna Inez passed at the court as an intrigue
of gallantry.
