They are good verses, and might satisfy an English reader who knew not the original: albeit they do not attain--how should they?--to the sullen weight of dark dread that loads the Latin Hexameters. Look at that--REGEMQUE TREMENDUM! And then, still, the insisting upon something more! To what nameless Powers do they belong--those unassigned hearts, that are without the experience and intelligence of complying with human prayers? The infatuation--_dementia_--which, on the verge of the rejoined light, turns back too soon the head of Orpheus towards her who follows him, is by Virgil said to be "Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere Manes!" A verse awful by the measure which it preserves between the human of the first half--_ignoscenda quidem_--and the infernal of the second half--_scirent si ignoscere Manes_. It places before us, in comparison, the Flexible, which lives in sunshine upon the earth--and the Inflexible, which reigns in the gloom of Erebus underneath it. What does Dryden? He takes down the still, severe majesty of Virgil by too much of the Flexible--by a double dose of humanity. "A fault _which easy pardon might receive, Were lovers judges_, or could Hell forgive." It is remarkable that he has himself quoted the line of Virgil with great praise, as one that approaches, within measure, to an Ovidian "turn." He has himself overstepped the measure, and made it quite Ovidian. The four verses which describe the fault of Orpheus, and the perception of it in hell, are unsurpassed:-- "Restitit; Eurydicenque suam jam luce sub ipsa, Immemor, heu! victusque animi respexit. Ibi omnis Effusus labor: atque immitis rupta tyranni Foedera: terque fragor stagnis auditus Avernis." Only note the growing pathos from the beloved name to the naming of the dread act. EURYDICEN--_suam_--_jam luce sub ipsa_--_immemor_--_heu!_-- _victusque animi_--RESPEXIT. Five links! Look, too, what a long way on in the verse that sin of backward-looking has brought you. There shall hardly be found another verse in Virgil which has a pause of that magnitude at that advance, in the measure. It is a great stretching on of the thought against the law of music, which usually controls you to place the logical in coincidence with the musical--stop; but here you are urged on into the very midst, and beyond the midst, of the last dactyl--a musical sleight which must needs heighten that feeling, impressed by the grammatical structure, of a voluntary delay,--of unwillingness to utter the word fraught with inevitable death--that mortal RESPEXIT! After this, there is here no poured out toil--no clashing and rending--No! here is the deep note of victory--the proclamation sounding out from the abyss that the prize which was carried off is regained. Thrice down--down--as low as the pools of Avernus breaks out a peal-- "Terque fragor stagnis auditus Avernis."