FOOTNOTES:
Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec sævior ulla
Pestis et ira Deûm Stygiis sese extulit undis.
Virginei volucrum vultus, fœdissima ventris
Proluvies, uncæque manus, et pallida semper
Ora fame.
Here the poet breaks the line, because he (and that he is Virgil) had not verse or language to describe that monster even as he had conceived her. Had he lived to our time, he would have been more overpowered with the reality than he was with the imagination. Virgil only knew the horror of the times before him. Had he lived to see the revolutionists and constitutionalists of France, he would have had more horrid and disgusting features of his harpies to describe, and more frequent failures in the attempt to describe them.
[16] London, J. Dodsley, 1792, 3 vols. 4to.—Vol. II. pp. 324-336, in the present edition.
[17] See the history of the melancholy catastrophe of the Duke of Buckingham. Temp. Hen. VIII.
[18] At si non aliam venturo fata Neroni, etc.
[19] Sir George Savile's act, called The Nullum Tempus Act.
[20] "Templum in modum arcis."—TACITUS, of the temple of Jerusalem.