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Phoebe parens, seu te Lyciae Pataraea nivosis

830

Exercent dumeta jugis, feu rore pudico
Castaliae flavos amor est tibi mergere crines;
Seu Trojam Thymbraeus habes, ubi fama volentem

Ingratis Phrygios humeris fubiisse molares:

Seu juvat Aegaeum feriens Latonius umbra

Cynthus, et affiduam pelago non quaerere Delon:
Tela tibi, longeque feros lentandus in hoftes
Arcus, et aetherii dono cessere parentes
Aeternum florere genas. tu doctus iniquas
Parcarum praenosse minas, fatumque quod ultra eft,
Et summo placitura Jovi. quis letifer annus,
Bella quibus populis, mutent quae fceptra cometae.
Tu Phryga fubmittis citharae. tu matris honori
Terrigenam Tityon Stygiis extendis arenis.

840

Te

!

i

829

835

Oh father Phoebus! whether Lycia's coast
And snowy mountain, thy bright prefence boaft!
Whether to sweet Castalia thou repair,
And bathe in silver dews thy yellow hair;
Or pleas'd to find fair Delos float no more,
Delight in Cynthus, and the shady shore;
Or chuse thy feat in Ilion's proud abodes,
The shining structures rais'd by lab'ring Gods;
By thee the bow and mortal shafts are born;
Eternal charms thy blooming youth adorn;
Skill'd in the laws of fecret fate above,
And the dark counsels of almighty Jove,
'Tis thine the feeds of future war to know,
The change of Sceptres, and impending woe;
When direful meteors spread through glowing air
Long trails of light, and shake their blazing hair.
Thy rage the Phrygian felt, who durst aspire

840

845

T' excel the music of thy heav'nly lyre;

Thy shafts aveng'd lewd Tityus' guilty flame,

Th' immortal victim of my mother's fame;

Thy

NOTES.

VER. 829. Some of the most finished lines he has ever written, down to verse 854.

VER. 841. 'Tis thine) Far superior to the original are these four lines; and how mean is the Tityus of Statius, compared with the tremendous picture in Virgil! May I venture to add, that we have in our language fome tranflations that have excelled the originals; perhaps they are, Rowe's Lucan, Pitt's Vida, Hampton's Polybius, Melmoth's Pliny, and Carter's Epictetus.

Te viridis Python, Thebanaque mater ovantem,
Horruit in pharetris. ultrix tibi torva Megaera 850
Jejunum Phlegyam fubter cava faxa jacentem
Aeterno premit accubitu, dapibusque profanis
Instimulat: fed mista famem fastidia vincunt.
Adfis o, memor hofpitii, Junoniaque arva
Dexter ames; feu te roseum Titana vocari
Gentis Achaemeniae ritu, feu praeftat Ofirin
Frugiferum, feu Perfei sub rupibus antri
Indignata fequi torquentem cornua Mitram.

NOTES.

855

VER. 850. Torva Megaera] This expression, and premit and inftimulat, are weakened in the translation; but mista faftidia is a harsh expression; as also is a line above, 842, Tu Phryga fubmittis citharae.

Thy hand flew Python, and the dame who lost
Her num'rous offspring for a fatal boast.
In Phlegyas' doom thy just revenge appears,
Condemn'd to Furies and eternal fears;
He views his food, but dreads, with lifted eye,
The mouldring rock that trembles from on high.

850

Propitious hear our pray'r, O Pow'r divine! 855 And on thy hofpitable Argos shine, Whether the stile of Titan please thee more, Whose purple rays th' Achaemenes adore ; Or great Ofiris, who first taught the swain In Pharian fields to fow the golden grain; Or Mitra, to whose beams the Persian bows, And pays, in hollow rocks, his awful vows; Mitra, whose head the blaze of light adorns, Who grafps the struggling heifer's lunar horns.

860

IN order to give young readers a just notion of chasteness and fimplicity of style, I have seen it of use to let them compare the mild majesty of Virgil and the violent exuberance of Statius, by reading ten lines of each immediately after one another. The motto for the style of the age of Augustus may be the " Simplex Munditiis" of Horace; for the age of Domitian and the fucceeding ages, the "Cultûque laborat Multiplici" of Lucan. After this censure of Statius's manner, it is but justice to add, that in The Thebais there are many strokes of a strong imagination; and indeed the picture of Amphiaraus, swallowed up fuddenly by a chasm that opened in the ground, is truly fublime :

" Illum ingens haurit specus, & tranfire parantes,
Mergit equos; non arma manu non frena remifit
Sicut erat, rectos defert in Tartara currus,
Refpexitq. cadens cœlum, campumq. coire
Ingemuit!"

B. vi. v. 817.

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