TILDEN LIBRARY

1895

Dedication to the Earl of Dorset and Mid-

dlesex,

PAGE.

283

286

Heads of an Answer to Mr Rymer's Remarks on

the Tragedies of the last Age,

Preface to Notes and Observations on the Empress

of Morocco,

Preface to the Husband his own Cuckold,

383

397

414

1

Æ NEÏS,

BOOK VIII.

ARGUMENT.

The war being now begun, both the generals make all possible preparations. Turnus sends to Diomedes. Eneas goes in person to beg succours from Evander and the Tuscans. Evander receives him kindly, furnishes him with men, and sends his son Pallas with him. Vulcan, at the request of Venus, makes arms for her son Eneas, and draws on his shield the most memorable actions of his posterity.

WHEN Turnus had assembled all his powers,
His standard planted on Laurentum's towers,
When now the sprightly trumpet, from afar,
Had given the signal of approaching war,
Had roused the neighing steeds to scour the fields,
While the fierce riders clattered on their shields,
Trembling with rage, the Latian youth prepare
To join the allies, and headlong rush to war.
Fierce Ufens, and Messapus, led the crowd,
With bold Mezentius, who blasphemed aloud.

VOL. XV.

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These through the country took their wasteful course,
The fields to forage, and to gather force.
Then Venulus to Diomede they send,
To beg his aid Ausonia to defend,
Declare the common danger, and inform

The Grecian leader of the growing storm :
"Eneas, landed on the Latian coast,
With banished gods, and with a baffled host,
Yet now aspired to conquest of the state,
And claimed a title from the gods and fate;
What numerous nations in his quarrel came,
And how they spread his formidable name.
What he designed, what mischiefs might arise,
If fortune favoured his first enterprize,
Was left for him to weigh, whose equal fears,
And common interest, was involved in theirs."
While Turnus and the allies thus urge the war,
The Trojan, floating in a flood of care,
Beholds the tempest which his foes prepare.
This way, and that, he turns his anxious mind;
Thinks and rejects the counsels he designed;
Explores himself in vain, in every part,
And gives no rest to his distracted heart.
So, when the sun by day, or moon by night,
Strike on the polished brass their trembling light,
The glittering species here and there divide,
And cast their dubious beams from side to side;
Now on the walls, now on the pavement play,
And to the cieling flash the glaring day.

}

'Twas night; and weary nature lulled asleep
The birds of air, and fishes of the deep,
And beasts, and mortal men. The Trojan chief
Was laid on Tyber's banks, oppressed with grief,
And found, in silent slumber, late relief.

Then, through the shadows of the poplar wood,
Arose the father of the Roman flood;

*Note I.