[L. 221.] mon affront, i.e. the affront offered me. This is a frequent use. Thus Racine makes Athalie say: 'que je ne cherche point à venger mes injures,' i.e. the wrongs suffered by me.
[L. 224.] Ovid, Met. xii. 247.
[L. 226.] Aen. x. 730; Od. xviii. 99.
[Ll. 241-252.] E. Faguet in his Chénier quotes this passage as an instance of energetic precision. 'The problem, he writes, is to depict this: A centaur (bear in mind that a centaur is a creature half-beast, half-man, with the body of a horse, the bust and head of a man, four feet, two arms, all this you must bear in mind), a centaur, with his two fore-feet, is trying to bear down a man, while, with his right arm, armed with a club, he seeks to brain another man. A third man leaps on to the back of the centaur, whence, pulling back his enemy's head with one hand, he thrusts a burning brand down his throat. The problem is to put all this in clear, precise, energetic, picturesque lines, and in few lines too. Chénier has succeeded in putting it in twelve times twelve syllables, with the result that, as it is, it stands in sharp outline as in a piece of sculpture.'
[L. 246.] D'un érable noueux, a club of maple. Dryden, Aen. '[Hercules] tossed about his head his knotted oak.'
[L. 250.] chevelure horrible, in the Latin sense of 'horrid, bristling.'
[Ll. 254-256.] Et le bois porte au loin des hurlements... l'ongle frappant.... Of course, what the wood conveys far away are such sounds as the trample of hoofs, the cries of the wounded warriors, the crash of the broken vessels, &c.
[L. 255.] l'ongle, Lat. ungula, stands for le sabot. Cf. Aen. viii. 596 'quatit ungula campum.'
[Ll. 260, 261.] Admiraient... abonder les paroles. This use of admirer followed by a pure infinitive, though, so far as we know, unprecedented, has nothing shocking in it and tends to make the line more concise. The construction is on the analogy of that which is customary with such verbs as voir, entendre, and 'admiraient abonder' is here said for 'voyaient avec admiration abonder.' Everything here is striking in the matter of language. Admirer is somewhat archaic and means 'to wonder.' 'Abonder de sa bouche' is anything but a hackneyed phrase. The etymological meaning of abonder, Lat. abundare, to overflow, was surely in the mind of Chénier when he wrote this. Such novelties as these make his style exquisite. Some pains should be taken to make something pass into English of the felicitous phrasing. Shall we presume to submit this suggestion; 'they admired the divine words, how they flowed from his lips'?
[L. 262.] Comme en hiver la neige... Il. iii. 221, 'And words that flew about our ears, like drifts of winter's snow.'—CHAPMAN.