No More Learning

--OVID, Met.

[576] _Form'd in a crystal lake the waters blend. _--Castera also
attributes this to history. "The Portuguese actually found in this
island," says he, "a fine piece of water ornamented with hewn stones and
magnificent aqueducts; an ancient and superb work, of which nobody knew
the author. "

In 1505 Don Francisco Almeyda built a fort in this island. In digging
among some ancient ruins he found many crucifixes of black and red
colour, from whence the Portuguese conjectured, says Osorius, that the
Anchedivian islands had in former ages been inhabited by
Christians. --Vid. Osor. 1. iv.

[577]

_The orange here perfumes the buxom air.
And boasts the golden hue of Daphne's hair. --_

Frequent allusions to the fables of the ancients form a characteristic
feature of the poetry of the 16th and 17th centuries. A profusion of it
is pedantry; a moderate use of it, however, in a poem of those times
pleases, because it discovers the stages of composition, and has in
itself a fine effect, as it illustrates its subject by presenting the
classical reader with some little landscapes of that country through
which he has travelled. The description of forests is a favourite topic
in poetry.
Chaucer, Tasso, and Spenser, have been happy in it, but both
have copied an admired passage in Statius:--

"Cadit ardua fagus,
Chaoniumque nemus, brumaeque illaesa cupressus;
Procumbunt piceae, flammis alimenta supremis,
Ornique, iliceaeque trabes, metuandaque sulco
Taxus, et infandos belli potura cruores
Fraxinus, atque situ non expugnabile robur:
Hinc audax abies, et odoro vulnere pinus
Scinditur, acclinant intonsa cacumina terrae
Alnus amica fretis, nec inhospita vitibus ulmus. "

In rural descriptions three things are necessary to render them
poetical: the happiness of epithet, of picturesque arrangement, and of
little landscape views. Without these, all the names of trees and
flowers, though strung together in tolerable numbers, contain no more
poetry than a nurseryman or a florist's catalogue. In Statius, in Tasso
and Spenser's admired forests (Ger. Liber. c. 3. st. 75, 76, and F.
Queen, b. 1 c. 1. st. 8, 9), the poetry consists entirely in the
happiness of the epithets. In Camoens, all the three requisites are
admirably attained and blended together.

[578] _And stain'd with lover's blood.