There is a pause in that line, during which the mother, had she not swooned, might have calmed her heart!
It is usual to discover that Virgil wants originality—that he transcribes his battles from Homer. In truth, it was not easy, with fights of the Homeric ages, to do otherwise. However, Virgil has done otherwise, if any one will be at the pains to look.
For instance, an incident, not in the battles by the Xanthus, is the following:—
A powerful Tuscan warrior, infuriated by the ill fighting of his men, distinguishes himself by an extraordinary feat. Clasping round the body, and so unhorsing a lighter antagonist, he rides off with him; snaps the javelin, which his captive still grasps, near the head, and with its point probes and aims for a vulnerable place. The unfortunate Latine, as he lies across the horse's neck, struggles, and will baffle the deathly blow. Landseer could suggest no more vivid comparison, than one which leaps into your own imagination—a snake soused upon by an eagle.
"So stoops the yellow eagle from on high,
And bears a speckled serpent through the sky,
Fastening his crooked talons on the prey:
The prisoner hisses through the liquid way;
Resists the royal hawk, and though oppresst,
She fights in columns and erects her crest:
Turn'd to her foe, she stiffens every scale,
And shoots her forky tongue, and whisks her threat'ning tail.
Against the victor all defence is weak;
The imperial bird still plies her with his beak,
He tears her bowels, and her heart he gores,
Then clasps his pinions and securely soars."
A glorious paraphrase!
This is an incident more like a knight of Ariosto's, the terrible Sarazin Rhodomont, or Orlando himself, than Homer's, who did not, indeed, combat on horseback.
But speaking of the moderns, we will venture to say, that if Virgil has copied, he is also an original who has been copied. And we will ask, who is the prototype of the ladies, turned knights, who flourish in favour with our poets of romance?—with Ariosto, with Tasso, with our own Spenser? Who but the heroic virgin ally of the Rutulian prince—who but Camilla?
We name her, however, neither for her own sake, nor for Virgil's, but for Dryden's, who seems also to have taken her into favour, and to have written, with a peculiar spirit and feeling, the parts of the poem which represent her in action.
She leads her Amazons into Italian fields, warring against the fate-driven fugitives of overthrown Troy. Whence were her Amazon followers? Whence is She? Her history her divine patroness, Diana, relates. Her father, the strong-limbed, rude-souled Metabus, a wild and intractable Volscian king, fled from the face and from the pursuit of his people. He bore, in his arms, one dear treasure; a companion of his flight; yet an infant—this daughter. He flies. The Amasenus, in flood, bars his way. More doubtful for his charge than for himself, hastily, with love-prompted art, he swathes the babe in stripped bark—binds her to the shaft of his huge oaken spear—dedicates her with a prayer to the virgin goddess of woods, and of the woodland chase—hurls, from a gigantic hand, the weapon across the tempestuous flood—and, ere his pursuers have reached him, plunges in, breasts the waters, and, saving and saved, swims across. In the forest depths, amongst imbosoming hills, the rugged sire fosters the vowed follower of Diana. The nursling of the wild grows up a bold and skilled huntress; and now that war storms in the land, she, with her huntress companions, joins the war. Some unexplained reconciliation, or perhaps restoration, has taken effect; for, along with her armed maidens, she leads the troops of the Volscians. In the field she fights like a virago; but her entrance thither was against the desire of the goddess, for it dooms her to die. Her eager following of a gorgeously armed warrior exposes her to a treacherous aim, and she falls. The provident goddess had put her own bow, and an arrow from her own quiver, into the hands of a nymph chosen to execute the vengeance of the impending death, and that arrow flies to its mark.