No More Learning

At tu quo ramis arbor miserabile corpus
Nunc tegis unius, mox es tectura duorum;
Signa tene caedis: pullosque et lectibus aptos
Semper habe foetus gemini monumenta cruoris. "

OVID, Met.

[579] _The shadowy vale. _--Literal from the original,--_O sombrio
valle_--which Fanshaw, however, has translated, "the gloomy valley," and
thus has given us a funereal, where the author intended a festive,
landscape. It must be confessed, however, that the description of the
island of Venus, is infinitely the best part of all of Fanshaw's
translation. And indeed the dullest prose translation might obscure, but
could not possibly throw a total eclipse over, so admirable an original.

[580] _The woe-mark'd flower of slain Adonis--water'd by the tears of
love. _--The Anemone. "This," says Castera, "is applicable to the
celestial Venus, for, according to my theology, her amour with Adonis
had nothing in it impure, but was only the love which nature bears to
the sun. " The fables of antiquity have generally a threefold
interpretation, an historical allusion, a physical and a metaphysical
allegory. In the latter view, the fable of Adonis is only applicable to
the celestial Venus. A divine youth is outrageously slain, but shall
revive again at the restoration of the golden age. Several nations, it
is well known, under different names, celebrated the Mysteries, or the
death and resurrection of Adonis; among whom were the British Druids, as
we are told by Dr. Stukely. In the same manner Cupid, in the fable of
Psyche, is interpreted by mythologists, to signify the Divine Love
weeping over the degeneracy of human nature.
[581]

_At strife appear the lawns and purpled skies,
Who from each other stole the beauteous dyes. --_

On this passage Castera has the following sensible, though turgid, note:
"This thought," says he, "is taken from the idyllium of Ausonius on the
rose:--

'Ambigeres raperetne rosis Aurora ruborem,
An daret, et flores tingere torta dies. '

Camoens who had a genius rich of itself, still further enriched it at
the expense of the ancients. Behold what makes great authors! Those who
pretend to give us nothing but the fruits of their own growth, soon
fail, like the little rivulets which dry up in the summer, very
different from the floods, who receive in their course the tribute of a
hundred and a hundred rivers, and which even in the dog-days carry their
waves triumphant to the ocean. "

[582] _The hyacinth bewrays the doleful_ Ai. --Hyacinthus, a youth
beloved of Apollo, by whom he was accidentally slain, and afterwards
turned into a flower:--

"Tyrioque nitentior ostro
Flos oritur, formamque capit, quam lilia: si non,
Purpureus color huic, argenteus esset in illis.
Non satis hoc Phaebo est: is enim fuit auctor honoris.
Ipse suos gemitus foliis inscribit; et Ai, Ai,
Flos habet inscriptum: funestaque littera ducta est. "

OVID, Met.


[583] _The second Argonauts. _--The expedition of the Golden Fleece was
esteemed, in ancient poetry, one of the most daring adventures, the
success of which was accounted miraculous. The allusions of Camoens to
this voyage, though in the spirit of his age, are by no means improper.

[584] _Wide o'er the beauteous isle the lovely fair. _--We now come to
the passage condemned by Voltaire as so lascivious, that no nation in
Europe, except the Portuguese and Italians, could bear it. The fate of
Camoens has hitherto been very peculiar.