“Yet let a race untamed, and haughty foes, His peaceful entrance with dire arms oppose; Oppress’d with numbers in th’ unequal field, His men discouraged and himself expelled, Let him for succour sue from place to place, Torn from his subjects and his son’s embrace; First let him see his friends in battle slain, And then untimely fate lament in vain; And when at length the cruel war shall cease, On hard conditions may he buy his peace; Nor let him then enjoy supreme command, But fall untimely by some hostile hand, And lie unburied on the barren sand.” “Æneid,” Book iv. 88. It is said that King Charles seemed concerned at this accident, and that Lord Falkland observing it, would likewise try his fortune in the same manner, hoping he might fall upon some passage that could have no relation to his case, and thereby divert the King’s thoughts from any impression the other might have upon him. But the place that Falkland stumbled upon was yet more suited to his destiny than the other had been to the King’s; being the following expressions of Evander upon the untimely death of his son Pallas, as they are translated by the same hand:-- “O Pallas! thou hast fail’d thy plighted word, To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword; I warn’d thee but in vain; for well I knew What perils youthful ardour would pursue, That boiling blood would carry thee too far, Young as thou wert in dangers--raw in war! O cursed essay in arms--disastrous doom, Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come.” “Æneid,” Book xi. 230. Again, as regards the King’s bust, the following record was current and commonly discussed:-- “Vandyke, having painted the King’s head, in three different attitudes, a profile, a three-quarters, and a full face, the picture was sent to Rome for Bernini, the celebrated sculptor, to make a bust from it. This artist, being exceedingly dilatory over his work, and having had complaints made to him on the subject, said that there was something so unusually sad and melancholy in the royal features, that if any stress might be laid on physiognomy, he was sure that the person whom the picture represented was destined for a violent end. When the bust arrived in England, the King being anxious to see it, it was taken immediately to Chelsea and placed on a table in the garden, whither the King, attended by many, went to inspect it. While so doing a hawk, with a wounded and bleeding partridge in its talons, flew over the King’s head, and some of the blood fell upon the marble neck of the bust, where it remained without being wiped off. The omen is said to have been marked by many.”