Note how Horace deals with the same theme in his Ode to Pyrrha, famous in Milton's overrated translation, and the difference between the young man writing under the smart of wounded feeling and the poet, calmly though intensely elaborating his subject as a work of art, becomes at once apparent. "Pyrrha, what slender boy, in perfume steeped, Doth in the shade of some delightful grot Caress thee now on couch with roses heaped? For whom dost thou thine amber tresses knot "With all thy seeming-artless grace? Ah me, How oft will he thy perfidy bewail, And joys all flown, and shudder at the sea Rough with the chafing of the blust'rous gale, "Who now, fond dreamer, revels in thy charms; Who, all unweeting how the breezes veer, Hopes still to find a welcome in thine arms As warm as now, and thee as loving-dear! "Ah, woe for those on whom thy spell is flung! My votive tablet, in the temple set, Proclaims that I to ocean's god have hung The vestments in my shipwreck smirched and wet." It may be that among Horace's odes some were directly inspired by the ladies to whom they are addressed; but it is time that modern criticism should brush away all the elaborate nonsense which has been written to demonstrate that Pyrrha, Chloe, Lalage, Lydia, Lyde, Leuconoë, Tyndaris, Glycera, and Barine, not to mention others, were real personages to whom the poet was attached. At this rate his occupations must have rather been those of a Don Giovanni than of a man of studious habits and feeble health, who found it hard enough to keep pace with the milder dissipations of the social circle. We are absolutely without any information as to these ladies, whose liquid and beautiful names are almost poems in themselves; nevertheless the most wonderful romances have been spun about them out of the inner consciousness of the commentators. Who would venture to deal in this way with the Eleanore, and "rare pale Margaret," and Cousin Amy, of Mr Tennyson? And yet to do so would be quite as reasonable as to conclude, as some critics have done, that such a poem as the following (Odes, I. 23) was not a graceful poetical exercise merely, but a serious appeal to the object of a serious passion:-- "Nay, hear me, dearest Chloe, pray! You shun me like a timid fawn, That seeks its mother all the day By forest brake and upland, lawn, Of every passing breeze afraid, And leaf that twitters in the glade. "Let but the wind with sudden rush The whispers of the wood awake, Or lizard green disturb the hush, Quick-darting through the grassy brake, The foolish frightened thing will start, With trembling knees and beating heart.[1] "But I am neither lion fell Nor tiger grim to work you woe; I love you, sweet one, much too well, Then cling not to your mother so, But to a lover's fonder arms Confide your ripe and rosy charms."