The various labours of the wandering moon,
And whence proceed the eclipses of the sun;
The original of men and beasts; and whence
The rains arise, and fires their warmth dispense,
And fixed and erring stars dispose their influence;
What shakes the solid earth; what cause delays
The summer nights, and shortens winter days.
With peals of shouts the Tyrians praise the song;
Those peals are echoed by the Trojan throng.
The unhappy queen with talk prolonged the night,
And drank large draughts of love with vast delight;
Of Priam much inquired, of Hector more;
Then asked what arms the swarthy Memnon wore,
What troops he landed on the Trojan shore;
The steeds of Diomede varied the discourse,
And fierce Achilles, with his matchless force;
At length, as Fate and her ill stars required,
To hear the series of the war desired.

"Relate at large, my god-like guest,” she said,
"The Grecian stratagems, the town betrayed:
The fatal issue of so long a war,

Your flight, your wanderings, and your woes, declare;
For, since on every sea, on every coast,

Your men have been distressed, your navy tossed,
Seven times the sun has either tropic viewed,
The winter banished, and the spring renewed."

NOTES

ON

ÆNEÏS, BOOK I.

Note I.

The realms of ocean, and the fields of air,
Are mine, not his.-P. 237.

Poetically speaking, the fields of air are under the command of Juno, and her vicegerent olus. Why then does Neptune call them his? I answer, Because, being god of the seas, Æolus could raise no tempest in the atmosphere above them without his leave. But why does Juno address to her own substitute? I answer, He had an immediate power over the winds, whom Juno desires to employ on her revenge. That power was absolute by land; which Virgil plainly insinuates: for, when Boreas and his brethren were let loose, he says at first, terras turbine perflant---then adds, Incubuere mari. To raise a tempest on the sea, was usurpation on the prerogative of Neptune, who had given him no leave, and therefore was enraged at his attempt. I may also add, that they who are in a passion, as Neptune then was, are apt to assume to themselves more than is properly their due.

Note II.

-&c.

O virgin!

If, as you seem, the sister of the day,

Or one at least of chaste Diana's train.---P. 244.

Thus in the original--

O quam te memorem, virgo

An Phœbi soror, an nympharum sanguinis una ?

This is a family compliment, which Æneas here bestows on Venus. His father Anchises had used the very same to that goddess when he courted her. This appears by that very ancient Greek poem, in which that amour is so beautifully described, and which is thought Homer's, though it seems to be written before his age.

Note III.

Her princely guest

Was next her side.--P. 259.

This, I confess, is improperly translated, and according to the modern fashion of sitting at table. But the ancient custom of lying on beds had not been understood by the unlearned reader.

The Hymn on Venus.

ENEIS,

BOOK II.

ARGUMENT.

Eneas relates how the city of Troy was taken, after a ten years" siege, by the treachery of Sinon, and the stratagem of a wooden horse. He declares the fixed resolution he had taken not to survive the ruin of his country, and the various adventures he met with in the defence of it. At last, having been before advised by Hector's ghost, and now by the appearance of his mother Venus, he is prevailed upon to leave the town, and settle his household gods in another country. In order to this, he carries off his father on his shoulders, and leads his little son by the hand, his wife following him behind. When he comes to the place appointed for the general rendezvous, he finds a great confluence of people, but misses his wife, whose ghost afterwards appears to him, and tells him the land which was designed for him.*

ALL were attentive to the godlike man,
When from his lofty couch he thus began:-
"Great queen, what you command me to relate,
Renews the sad remembrance of our fate :

The destruction of Veii is here shadowed under that of Troy. Livy, in his description of it, seems to have emulated in his prose, and almost equalled, the beauty of Virgil's verse.---DRYDEN.

An empire from its old foundations rent,
And every woe the Trojans underwent ;
A peopled city made a desert place;
All that I saw, and part of which I was;
Not even the hardest of our foes could hear,
Nor stern Ulysses tell, without a tear.
And now the latter watch of wasting night,
And setting stars, to kindly rest invite.
But, since you take such interest in our woe,
And Troy's disastrous end desire to know,
I will restrain my tears, and briefly tell
What in our last and fatal night befell.

By destiny compelled, and in despair,
The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war,
And, by Minerva's aid, a fabric reared,

Which like a steed of monstrous height appeared The sides were planked with pine: they feigned it

made

For their return, and this the vow they paid.
Thus they pretend, but in the hollow side,
Selected numbers of their soldiers hide :
With inward arms the dire machine they load,
And iron bowels stuff the dark abode.
In sight of Troy lies Tenedos, an isle
(While Fortune did on Priam's empire smile)
Renowned for wealth; but, since, a faithless bay,
Where ships exposed to wind and weather lay.
There was their fleet concealed. We thought, for
Greece

Their sails were hoisted, and our fears release.
The Trojans, cooped within their walls so long,
Unbar their gates, and issue in a throng,
Like swarming bees, and with delight survey
The camp deserted, where the Grecians lay:
The quarters of the several chiefs they showed-
Here Phoenix, here Achilles, made abode;
Here joined the battles; there the navy rode.