Which lost the purple, mingling with the flood; Then like a troubled torrent it appeared; The torrent too, in little space, was cleared; The stone was cleft, and through the yawning chink New reeds arose, on the new river's brink. The rock, from out its hollow womb, disclosed A sound like water in its course opposed: When (wonderous to behold!) full in the flood, Up starts a youth, and navel-high he stood. Horns from his temples rise; and either horn Thick wreaths of reeds (his native growth) adorn. Were not his stature taller than before, His bulk augmented, and his beauty more, His colour blue, for Acis he might pass; And Acis, changed into a stream, he was. But, mine no more, he rolls along the plains With rapid motion, and his name retains. FOOTNOTES: [39] _Simagres_, one of our author's Gallicisms, for affected contortions of the face. [40] The word _bear-cubs_ is wanting, to complete the sense of Ovid: "_Villosæ catulos ursæ_." OF THE PYTHAGOREAN PHILOSOPHY. FROM THE FIFTEENTH BOOK OF OVID'S METAMORPHOSES. _The fourteenth book concludes with the death and deification of Romulus; the fifteenth begins with the election of Numa to the crown of Rome. On this occasion, Ovid, following the opinion of some authors, makes Numa the scholar of Pythagoras, and to have begun his acquaintance with that philosopher at Crotona, a town in Italy; from thence he makes a digression to the moral and natural philosophy of Pythagoras; on both which our author enlarges; and which are the most learned and beautiful parts of the Metamorphoses._