[39] Andrew Marvell most likely borrowed his thought from the Roman poet in his graceful lines, “The Nymph’s Complaint:”—
“The wanton troopers, riding by,
Have shot my fawn, and it will die.
Ungentle men! they cannot thrive
Who killed thee. Thou ne’er didst alive
Them any harm, alas! nor could
Thy death yet do them any good.”
[40] No doubt the Camilla of the Roman poet is a reminiscence of the Amazon Penthesilea in Homer, just as the fairy footstep, that left no trace on sea or land, is borrowed from those wondrous mares of Ericthonius to whom Homer assigns the same performance. But the copy far surpasses the original in grace and beauty. Our English poets have made free use of this fancy of the footsteps of beauty: none more sweetly than Jonson in his ‘Sad Shepherd,’ where Æglamour laments his lost Earinè:—
“Here she was wont to go, and here, and here—
Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow;
The world may find the spring by following her,
For other print her airy steps ne’er left.
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass,
Or shake the downy blow-bell from his stalk:
But like the south-west wind she shot along,
And where she went the flowers took thickest root,
As she had sowed them with her odorous foot.”
—The ‘Sad Shepherd,’ Act I. sc. 1.
[41] The thunderbolt is usually represented on ancient coins and medallions with twelve rays.
[42] Dido has always been a favourite heroine with Frenchmen, and has been worked up into three or four tragedies. One writer, partly adopting M. Segrais’s notion of how things ought to have been—that is to say, how a Frenchman would have behaved himself when such a parting was inevitable—has made Æneas take at least a civil farewell of the injured queen:—
“Helas! si de mon sort j’avais ici mon choix,
Bornant à vous aimer le bonheur de ma vie,
Je tiendrais de vos mains un sceptre, une patrie:
Les dieux m’ont envie le seul de leurs bienfaits,
Qui pourait réparer tous les maux qu’ils m’ont faits.”
And Dido, mollified by this declaration, far from cursing the fugitive lover in her last moments, assures him of her unchangeable affection, rather apologising for having so inconveniently fallen in his way, and delayed him so improperly from Lavinia and his kingdom:—
“Et toi, d’ont j’ai troublée la haute destinée,
Toi, qui ne m’entends plus—adieux, mon cher Ænée!
Ne crains point ma colere—elle expire avec moi,
Et mes derniers soupirs sont encore pour toi!”{*}
{*} Le Franc de Pompignan, “Didon.”