And wreathing arms did soft embraces join,
A doubtful trembling seized me first all o'er,
Then wishes, and a warmth unknown before;
What followed was all extasy and trance,
Immortal pleasures round my swimming eyes did dance,
And speechless joys, in whose sweet tumults tost,
I thought my breath and my new being lost.[126]
She went on, and said a thousand good things at random, but so strangely mixed that you would be apt to say all her wit is mere good luck, and not the effect of reason and judgment. When I made my escape hither I found a gentleman playing the critic on two other great poets, even Virgil and Homer.[127] He was observing, that Virgil is more judicious than the other in the epithets he gives his hero. "Homer's usual epithet," said he, "is Πόδας ὠχὺς, or Ποδάρχης, and his indiscretion has been often rallied by the critics, for mentioning the nimbleness of foot in Achilles, though he describes him standing, sitting, lying down, fighting, eating, drinking, or in any other circumstance, however foreign or repugnant to speed and activity. Virgil's common epithet to Æneas, is 'Pius' or 'Pater.' I have therefore considered," said he, "what passage there is in any of his hero's actions, where either of these appellations would have been most improper, to see if I could catch him at the same fault with Homer: and this, I think, is his meeting with Dido in the cave, where Pius Æneas would have been absurd, and Pater Æneas a burlesque: the poet has therefore wisely dropped them both for Dux Trojanus,
"Speluncam Dido dux et Trojanus eandem Devenient;[128]
which he has repeated twice in Juno's speech, and his own narration: for he very well knew a loose action might be consistent enough with the usual manners of a soldier, though it became neither the chastity of a pious man, nor the gravity of the father of a people."