'The sovereign castle of the rockly isle
Wherein Penelope the Princess lay,'
lit with a thousand lamps on a festal night when the suitors had assembled, at the queen's invitation, to hear the minstrel Phoemius sing the praises of the heroes who had fought at Troy. With such beauty shone Penelope that the suitors were abashed at their temerity in having dared to woo her. But one 'fresh and jolly knight,' Antinous, so far from being dismayed,
'boldly gan advance
And with fair manners wooed the Queen to dance.'
She blushingly declined, and mildly chided him for trying to persuade her to new-fangled follies. Forthwith he launched into a rapturous disquisition on the antiquity of dancing, which began when Love persuaded the jarring elements—fire, air, earth, and water—to cease from conflict and observe true measure. The sun and moon, the fixed and wandering stars, the girdling sea and running streams, all 'yield perfect forms of dancing.' With exuberant fancy, fetching his illustrations from near and far, he pursues his theme through many richly-coloured stanzas. It may be worth while to remark (as his editors have been silent on the subject) that Davies does not scruple to borrow freely from Lucian. Take, for instance, stanza 80:—
'Wherefore was Proteus said himself to change
Into a stream, a lion, and a tree,
And many other forms fantastic strange