Prepared an ambush; and the wives and boys,
With all the hoary elders, kept the walls.
Cowper.
And near to them
Stood Misery.]
Warton observes, History of English poetry, vol. i. p. 468: “The French and Italian poets, whom Chaucer imitates, abound in allegorical personages: and it is remarkable that the early poets of Greece and Rome were fond of these creations: we have in Hesiod ‘Darkness:’ and many others; if the Shield of Hercules be of his hand.” But it seems to have escaped the writer that it is not literal, but figurative Darkness which is personified. Guietus ingeniously supposes that it is meant for the dimness of death. Homer, indeed, applies to this the same term: in the death of Eurymachus, Od. xxii. 88:
Κατ’ οφθαλμων δ’ εχυτ’ ΑΧΛΥΣ.
A darkening mist was pour’d upon his eyes.
Tanaquil Faber, on Longinus, contends that αχλυς is here Sorrow. Sorrow is personified in a fragment of Ennius: