“By no weak pity might the gods be moved; She who thus perished, not without the crime Of lovers that in Reason’s spite have loved, Was doomed to wear out her appointed time, Apart from happy ghosts that gather flowers Of blissful quiet ’mid unfading bowers.” --WORDSWORTH’S ‘Laodamia.’ [36] But none of the recognised translations seem to come so near the spirit of the original as Lord Macaulay’s paraphrase--for of course it is only a paraphrase--in his lay of “The Prophecy of Capys:”-- “Leave to the sons of Carthage The rudder and the oar; Leave to the Greek his marble nymphs And scrolls of wordy lore: Thine, Roman, is the pilum; Roman, the sword is thine; The even trench, the bristling mound, The legion’s ordered line.” [37] Virgil is said to have received from her what would amount, in our money, to above £2000--“a round sum,” remarks Dryden, with something like professional envy, “for twenty-seven verses.” [38] See p. 66. [39] Andrew Marvell most likely borrowed his thought from the Roman poet in his graceful lines, “The Nymph’s Complaint:”-- “The wanton troopers, riding by, Have shot my fawn, and it will die. Ungentle men! they cannot thrive Who killed thee. Thou ne’er didst alive Them any harm, alas! nor could Thy death yet do them any good.” [40] No doubt the Camilla of the Roman poet is a reminiscence of the Amazon Penthesilea in Homer, just as the fairy footstep, that left no trace on sea or land, is borrowed from those wondrous mares of Ericthonius to whom Homer assigns the same performance. But the copy far surpasses the original in grace and beauty. Our English poets have made free use of this fancy of the footsteps of beauty: none more sweetly than Jonson in his ‘Sad Shepherd,’ where Æglamour laments his lost Earinè:-- “Here she was wont to go, and here, and here-- Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow; The world may find the spring by following her, For other print her airy steps ne’er left. Her treading would not bend a blade of grass, Or shake the downy blow-bell from his stalk: But like the south-west wind she shot along, And where she went the flowers took thickest root, As she had sowed them with her odorous foot.” --The ‘Sad Shepherd,’ Act I. sc. 1. [41] The thunderbolt is usually represented on ancient coins and medallions with twelve rays. [42] Dido has always been a favourite heroine with Frenchmen, and has been worked up into three or four tragedies. One writer, partly adopting M. Segrais’s notion of how things ought to have been--that is to say, how a Frenchman would have behaved himself when such a parting was inevitable--has made Æneas take at least a civil farewell of the injured queen:--