Pope’s Odyssey.
Poor Cicero might indeed have asked the question seven or eight centuries after, in days falsely said to be civilized to a state of perfection; when his most inhuman murder near this town, completed the measure of their crimes; who to their country’s fate added that of its philosopher, its orator, its acknowledged father and preserver.—Cruel, ungrateful Rome! ever crimson with the blood of its own best citizens—theatre of civil discord and proscriptions, unheard of in any history but her’s; who, next to Jerusalem in sins, has been next in sufferings too; though twice so highly favoured by Heaven—from the dreadful moment when all her power was at once crushed by barbarism, and even her language rendered dead among mankind—to the present hour, when even her second splendours, like the last gleams of an aurora borealis, fade gradually from the view, and sink almost imperceptibly into decay. Nor can the exemplary virtues and admirable conduct of this, and of her four last princes, redeem her from ruin long threatened to her past tyrannical offences; any more than could the merits of Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus Pius compensate for the crimes of Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero.—Let the death of Cicero, which inspired this rhapsody, contribute to excuse it; and let me turn my eyes to the bewitching spot—
Where Circe dwelt, the daughter of the day.
That such enchantresses should inhabit such regions could have been scarce a wonder in Homer’s time I trow; the same country still retains the same power of producing singers, to whom our English may with propriety enough cry out;
——Hail, foreign wonder!
Whom certes our rough shades did never breed.
Milton.
That she should be the offspring of Phœbus too, in a place where the sun’s rays have so much power, was a well-imagined fable one may feel; and her instructions to Ulysses for his succeeding voyage, just, apt, and proper: enjoining him a prayer to Crateis the mother of Scylla, to pacify her rapacious daughter’s fury, is the least intelligible of all Circe’s advice, to me. But when I saw the nasty trick they had at Naples, of spreading out the ox-hides to dry upon the sea shore, as one drives to Portici; the Sicilian herds, mentioned in the Odyssey, and their crawling skins, came into my head in a moment.
We have left these scenes of fabulous wonder and real pleasure however; left the warm vestiges of classic story, and places which have produced the noblest efforts of the human mind; places which have served as no ignoble themes for truly immortal song; all quitted now! all left for recollection to muse on, and for fancy to combine: but these eyes I fear will never more survey them. Well! no matter—
When like the baseless fabric of a vision,