I remember a bas-relief in the Vatican, which represents Hermes restoring Protesilaus to his mourning wife. The interview was granted for three hours only; and when the hero was taken from her a second time, she died on the threshhold of her palace. This is a frequent and appropriate subject for sarcophagi and funereal vases. But there exists, I believe, no single statue commemorative of the wife’s passionate devotion. The modern sculptor should penetrate his fancy with the sentiment of Wordsworth’s Laodamia. While the pen is in my hand I may remark that two of the stanzas in the Laodamia have been altered, and, as it seems to me, not improved, since the first edition. Originally the poem opened thus: “With sacrifice, before the rising morn Perform’d, my slaughter’d lord have I required; And in thick darkness, amid shades forlorn, Him of the infernal Gods have I desired: Celestial pity I again implore; Restore him to my sight—great Jove, restore!” Altered thus, and comparatively flat:— “With sacrifice before the rising morn Vows have I made, by fruitless hope inspired; And from the infernal Gods, mid shades forlorn Of night, my slaughtered lord have I required: Celestial pity I again implore; Restore him to my sight—great Jove, restore!” In the early edition the last stanza but one stood thus:— “Ah! judge her gently who so deeply loved! Her who, in reason’s spite, yet without crime, Was in a trance of passion thus removed; Delivered from the galling yoke of time, And these frail elements,—to gather flowers Of blissful quiet ’mid unfading bowers!” In the later editions thus altered, and, to my taste, spoiled:— “By no weak pity might the Gods be moved; She who thus perish’d not without the crime Of lovers that in Reason’s spite have loved, Was doomed to wander in a grosser clime Apart from happy ghosts, that gather flowers Of blissful quiet ’mid unfading bowers.” Altered, probably, because Virgil has introduced the shade of Laodamia among the criminal and unhappy lovers,—an instance of extraordinary bad taste in the Roman poet; whatever may have been her faults, she surely deserved to be placed in better company than Phædra and Pasiphäe. Wordsworth’s intuitive feeling and taste were true in the first instance, and he might have trusted to them. In my own copy of Wordsworth I have been careful to mark the original reading in justice to the _original_ Laodamia. [Illustration] HIPPOLYTUS. NEOPTOLEMUS.