----Tibi suaveis Dædala tellus Submittit flores: _tibi_ RIDENT _æquora ponti_. Inelegantly rendered by Creech, The roughest sea puts on smooth looks, and SMILES. Dryden more happily, The ocean SMILES, and smooths her wavy breast. But Metastasio has copied Lucretius:-- A te fioriscono Gli erbosi prat: E i flutti RIDONO Nel mar placati. It merits observation, that the _Northern Poets_ could not exalt their imagination higher than that the water SMILED, while the modern Italian, having before his eyes _a different Spring_, found no difficulty in agreeing with the ancients, that the waves LAUGHED. Modern poetry has made a very free use of the animating epithet LAUGHING. Gray has LAUGHING FLOWERS: and Langhorne in two beautiful lines personifies Flora:-- Where Tweed's soft banks in liberal beauty lie, And Flora LAUGHS beneath an azure sky. Sir William Jones, in the spirit of Oriental poetry, has "the LAUGHING AIR." Dryden has employed this epithet boldly in the delightful lines, almost entirely borrowed from his original, Chaucer:-- The morning lark, the messenger of day, Saluted in her song the morning gray; And soon the sun arose, with beams so bright, That all THE HORIZON LAUGHED to see the joyous sight. _Palamon and Arcite_, B. ii.[25] It is extremely difficult to conceive what the ancients precisely meant by the word _purpureus_. They seem to have designed by it anything BRIGHT and BEAUTIFUL. A classical friend has furnished me with numerous significations of this word which are very contradictory. Albinovanus, in his elegy on Livia, mentions _Nivem purpureum_. Catullus, _Quercus ramos purpureos_. Horace, _Purpureo bibet ore nectar_, and somewhere mentions _Olores purpureos_. Virgil has _Purpuream vomit ille animam_; and Homer calls the sea _purple_, and gives it in some other book the same epithet, when in a storm. The general idea, however, has been fondly adopted by the finest writers in Europe. The PURPLE of the ancients is not known to us. What idea, therefore, have the moderns affixed to it? Addison, in his Vision of the Temple of Fame, describes the country as "being covered with a kind of PURPLE LIGHT." Gray's beautiful line is well known:-- The bloom of young desire and _purple light_ of love. And Tasso, in describing his hero Godfrey, says, Heaven Gli empie d'onor la faccia, e vi riduce Di Giovinezza _il bel purpureo lume_. Both Gray and Tasso copied Virgil, where Venus gives to her son Æneas-- ----_Lumenque_ Juventæ _Purpureum_. Dryden has omitted the _purple light_ in his version, nor is it given by Pitt; but Dryden expresses the general idea by ---- With hands divine, Had formed his curling locks and _made his temples shine_, And given his rolling eys a _sparkling grace_.