Illustrative. To Mercury's construction of the lyre out of a tortoise shell, Gray refers (Progress of Poesy), "Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs, Enchanting shell!" etc. See Shakespeare, King John, IV, ii; Henry IV, IV, i; Richard III, II, i; IV, iii; Hamlet, III, iv; Milton, Paradise Lost, 3, "Though by their powerful art they bind Volatile Hermes"; 4, 717; 11, 133; Il Penseroso, 88; Comus, 637, 962. Poems: Sir T. Martin, Goethe's Phœbus and Hermes; Shelley's translation of Homer's Hymn to Mercury.
In Art. The Mercury in the Central Museum, Athens; Mercury Belvedere (Vatican); Mercury in Repose (National Museum, Naples). The Hermes by Praxiteles, in Olympia (text, opp. p. [150]), and the Hermes Psychopompos leading to the underworld the spirit of a woman who has just died (text, Fig. 20; from a relief sculptured on the tomb of Myrrhina), are especially fine specimens of ancient sculpture.
In modern sculpture: Cellini's Mercury (base of Perseus, Loggia del Lanzi, Florence); Giov. di Bologna's Flying Mercury (bronze, Bargello, Florence: text, opp. p. [330]); Thorwaldsen's Mercury. In modern painting: Tintoretto's Mercury and the Graces; Francesco Albani's Mercury and Apollo; Claude Lorrain's Mercury and Battus; Turner's Mercury and Argus; Raphael's allegorical Mercury (Wednesday), Vatican, Rome; and his Mercury with Psyche (Farnese Frescoes).
37. Interpretative. The name Hestia (Latin Vesta) has been variously derived from roots meaning to sit, to stand, to burn. The two former are consistent with the domestic nature of the goddess; the latter with her relation to the hearth-fire. She is "first of the goddesses," the holy, the chaste, the sacred.
Illustrative. Milton, Il Penseroso (Melancholy), "Thee bright-haired Vesta long of yore To solitary Saturn bore," etc.
38. (1) Cupid (Eros). References and allusions to Cupid throng our poetry. Only a few are here given. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, I, iv; Merchant of Venice, II, vi; Merry Wives, II, ii; Much Ado About Nothing, I, i; II, i; III, ii; Midsummer Night's Dream, I, i; II, ii; IV, i; Cymbeline, II, iv; Milton, Comus, 445, 1004; Herrick, The Cheat of Cupid; Pope, Rape of the Lock, 5, 102; Dunciad, 4, 308; Moral Essays, 4, 111; Windsor Forest,—on Lord Surrey, "In the same shades the Cupids tuned his lyre To the same notes of love and soft desire."
Poems. Chaucer, The Cuckow and Nightingale, or Boke of Cupid (?); Occleve, The Letter of Cupid; Beaumont and Fletcher, Cupid's Revenge, and the Masque, A Wife for a Month; J.G. Saxe, Death and Cupid, on their exchange of arrows, "And that explains the reason why Despite the gods above, The young are often doomed to die, The old to fall in love"; Thomas Ashe, The Lost Eros; Coventry Patmore, The Unknown Eros. Also John Lyly's Campaspe:
Cupid and my Campaspe playd,
At cardes for kisses, Cupid payd;
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
His mother's doves, and teeme of sparows;
Looses them too; then, downe he throwes
The corrall of his lippe, the rose
Growing on's cheek (but none knows how),
With these, the cristall of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chinne:
All these did my Campaspe winne.
At last hee set her both his eyes;
Shee won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O love! has shee done this to thee?
What shall (alas!) become of mee?
See also Lang's translation of Moschus, Idyl I, and O. Wilde, The Garden of Eros.