Excellent reasons! Against the last, particularly, we might make many objections. The very epithets applied to the various personified abstractions,—“Calor aridus,” “Ceres pulverulenta,” “Volturnus altitonans,” “fulmine pollens Auster,” “Algus dentibus crepitans,”—show that they received their characteristics from the poet and not from the artist. He would certainly have treated them very differently. Spence seems to have derived his idea of a procession from Abraham Preigern, who, in his remarks on this passage, says, “Ordo est quasi Pompæ cujusdam. Ver et Venus, Zephyrus et Flora,” &c. But Spence should have been content to stop there. To say that the poet makes his seasons move as in a procession, is all very well; but to say that he learned their sequences from a procession, is nonsense.
Note 21, p. [62].
Valerius Flaccus, lib. ii. Argonaut, v. 265–273.
Serta patri, juvenisque comam vestisque Lyæi
Induit, et medium curru locat; æraque circum
Tympanaque et plenas tacita formidine cistas.
Ipsa sinus hederisque ligat famularibus artus;
Pampineamque quatit ventosis ictibus hastam,
Respiciens; teneat virides velatus habenas
Ut pater, et nivea tumeant ut cornua mitra,