Where with stretch'd wing swift Scylla cuts the skies, Behind, on rustling plume, fierce Nisus flies; And where swift Nisus tow'rs, her forward flight, 455 Darts far away, and cleaves th' aerial height. Hush'd their hoarse pipe, and press'd to clearer notes, Rooks to redoubled echoes strain their throats; 460 Or prescience theirs, to mark the will of Heav'n: 475 And rooks, exulting, strain their gurgling throats. 470 hair, on which depended the security of the state. Scylla, his daughter, enamoured of Minos, who had laid siege to Megara, cut off the fatal lock. Minos rejected her advances, and sailed to Crete without her. She plunged after him, and clung to the vessel that conveyed him, till her father, changed into a seaeagle, hovered over her to tear her into pieces, when she loosed her hold, and was changed into a ciris, supposed to be a lark. Ovid's Metam. book viii.-Stawell. But if (unerring sign) the orb of night Clear wheel through heav'n her fourth increasing light, Rain nor rude blast shall vex that hallow'd day, 485 Alike, with orient beams or western rays, The prescient sun each future change displays: Signs, that can ne'er deceive, the sun attend At day's first dawn, or when the stars ascend. When many a spot his rising lustre shrouds, Half-hid the disk beneath a vale of clouds, Beware the show'rs, that from the south wind sprung, 490 Foam the strown corn, and herds, and woods among. grove. 505 510 Last, what late eve shall bring, what winds prevail, Who dares mistrust the god that gives the day? 515 520 He, too, when Rome deplored her Cæsar's fate, The rivers stop, earth opes, and brutal herds, 52. 550 519 Plutarch says that this obscurity continued for a year after the death of Julius; and that the fruits rotted, withous coming to maturity, for want of the heat of the sun.-Stawell. 522 Ovid mentions the dogs howling in the forum, and about houses, and in the temples.-Stawell. 526 The academy of Naples confirms the propriety of the poet's description of a volcanic eruption, in the account published of the eruption from Vesuvius in 1737, when the rocks were melted. Stawell. L 527 Appian speaks of the din of arms, the shouting of men, and the trampling of horses being heard, though nothing could be seen. Appian, lib. iv.-Stawell. Perhaps this was some remarkable aurora-borealis seen abou that time in Germany. The learned M. Celsius, professor of astronomy at Upsal in Sweden, has assured me, that in those northern parts of the world, during the appearance of an aurora borealis, he has heard a rushing sound in the air, like the clap ping of a bird's wings.-Martyn. 529 Plutarch and Ovid mention ghosts appearing at night, be fore Cæsar's death. See Calphurnia's speech in Shakspeare' Julius Cæsar, Act ii. sc. 2. 530 Josephus, speaking of the prodigies that preceded the destruction of Jerusalem, says that the priests heard a voice i the night-time, saying, "Let us go hence."-Martyn. 533 Appian says that some statues sweated blood. Ovid and Tibullus mention the tears of the images of the gods. Monarch of rivers, raging far and wide, 535 540 Down the wide deluge whirls th' uprooted wood, 545 536 The Greek name of the Po, "the monarch" of the Italian rivers. Along the banks of this river are high dikes raised against its depredations: there are matted huts at every hundred or two hundred yards, with men stationed, called "Guardia di Po," ready to assist with their tools at a moment's warning, in case of a breach.-See Young's Tour, quoted by Stawell. 543 Thunder from a clear sky was always deemed a prodigy by the ancients. A comet appeared for seven nights after the death of Julius; which Pliny says was worshipped in a temple at Rome, as a sign that the soul of Cæsar was received into the number of the gods. 545 In the history of the two civil wars of Cæsar and Pompey, and of Augustus and the republicans under Brutus and Cassius, we shall find, as Mr. Martyn suggests, that they may be ascribed to the same country. Lucan speaks of Emathia, Thessaly, Hæmus, Pharsalus, and Philippi, being in the same country. Strabo tells us that some reckon Epirus a part of Macedon. Pomponius Mela seems to speak of Thessaly also as a part of Macedon. Ovid places Philippi in the Emathian territory, which comprised, probably, in the indistinctness of ancient geography, Macedon, Thessaly, and Epirus: there will appear therefore a very pardonable latitude in Virgil's calling these different subdenominations of country by the comprehensive description Emathian, including the extensive plains of Hamus in Thrace, to whose very confines the wreck of Pompey's army was pursued in the neighbourhood of Philippi.-Stawell. Virgil means by his two battles of Philippi, not two battles on the same spot, but at two distant places of the same name: the former (that of Cæsar and Pompey) at Philippi (Theba Phthiæ), near Pharsalus, in Thessaly; the latter (that of Augustus against Nor did the gods repent that twice our host, 550 Of Tuscan Tiber, and the Roman tow'rs; 555 Sates vengeful gods for Troy's perfidious guilt. 560 Brutus and Cassius) at Philippi, near the confines of Thrace.— Holdsworth. 549 The art of the poet, in returning to his subject by inserting the circumstance of the ploughman finding the old armour, cannot be sufficiently admired. Philips has finely imitated it in his Cyder," where, speaking of the destruction of old Ariconium, he adds: upon that treacherous tract of land There whilom stood: now, Ceres, in her prime, Philips's Cyder, b. i.- Warton. 553 What difficulty a poet so justly celebrated as De Lille should have found in rendering into French the original of this passage, I cannot conceive. His translation, and his note, I shall now transcribe. "Et des soldats Romains les ossemens rouler." "Je n'ai pu rendre ce mot 'grandia' (large), qui, si l'on er croit les commentateurs, fait allusion à une opinion particulière des anciens. Ils croyoient que les hommes dégénéroient de siècle en siècle: voilà de ces expressions qui sont intraduisibles, parce qu'elles tiennent aux préjugés et aux opinions des anciens "How strange! 560 Laomedon defrauded Apollo and Neptune of the reward promised them for building a rampart round Troy: to appease the wrath of the offended deities, he exposed his daughter Hesione to a sea-monster, whom Hercules released: but Her |