[185] Nunquam animam talem dextra hac (absiste moveri) Amittes; habitet tecum, & sit pectore in isto.
A Soul like that (dismiss Thy Terror) by this Hand thou ne'er shalt lose; There let it dwell, and in that Breast remain.
thus turns his Discourse to the King:
Nunc ad Te, & tua, magne Pater, consulta revertor. Si nullam nostris ultra spem ponis in armis, Si tam deserti sumus, ut semel agmine verso Funditus occidimus, nec habet fortuna regressum; Oremus pacem, & dextras tendamus inermes. Quanquam ô! si solitæ quicquam virtutis adesset; Ille mihi ante alios fortunatusque laborum, Egregiusque animi, qui, ne quid tale videret, Procubuit moriens, & humum semel ore momordit.
To you, great Monarch, and to your Debates, I now return. If you no more repose Hope in our Arms; if by one Battle lost, We perish whole, and Fortune knows no Change; Let us beg Peace, and stretch our Hands unarm'd. (Yet Oh! did any of our pristine Worth And Virtue still remain; that Man to me Would in his glorious Toils most blest appear, Who, rather than behold a Thing like this, Fell once for all, and dying bit the Ground.)
Reverence due to Majesty requir'd that Turnus should direct his Discourse from Drances to the King, by some solemn Address. But after dextras tendamus inermes, to Quanquam ô! si solitæ quicquam virtutis adesset, the Transition is sudden, and unexpected. The Mind, by this Means, is transported from one Contrary to another; a sure Indication of the Force of Eloquence, and of its powerful Operation on its Hearers.
In Narrations 'tis no small Art to make a Transition from one Fact to another: Several Instances of this, we have in Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Nature of which Work requir'd them; where the Connection, indeed, is sometimes neat and artful, sometimes hard and forced, not to say ridiculous.
Under this Head we may reckon those Excursions of another kind, in which the Poet, by some sudden Allusion or Comparison, diverts from his Subject to a new Matter, and immediately returns to it again. I shall explain myself better by Example. Juvenal, describing the various Inconveniencies of the City, mentions these, among the rest:
[186] ——Rhedarum transitus arcto Vicorum inflexu, & stantis convicia mandræ, Eripiunt somnum Druso, vitulisque marinis.
The Drover who his Fellow Drover meets In narrow Passages of winding Streets; The Waggoners that curse their standing Teams, Wou'd wake ev'n drowsy Drusus from his Dreams. Dryden.