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BOOK III, CHAPTER V 43

daus endormis. J’ay veu par experience que cette extreme souffrance, quand elle vient 4 se desnouer, produit des ven- geances plus aspres: car, prenant feu tout A coup, la cholere

et la fureur s’emmoncelant en un, esclate tous ses efforts a

la premiere charge,

irarumque omnes effundit habenas.'

I] la fit mourir et grand nombre de ceux de son intelligence, jusques a tel qui n’en panna mais et qu’elle avoit convié & son lit 4 coups d’escorgée.?

What Virgil says of Venus and Vulcan, Lucretius had said more fittingly of a stolen meeting between her and Mars:

Belli fera moenera Mavors

Armipotens regit, in gremium qui sepe tuum se

Rejicit, eterno devinctus vulnere amoris. . . .

Pascit amore avidos inhians in te, Dea, visus,

Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore;

Hunc tu, diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto

Circumfusa super, suaveis ex ore loquelas

Funde.* When I ponder upon this rejicit, pascit, inhians, molli, fovet, medullas, labefacta, pendit, percurrit, and this noble circum. Jfusa, mother of the dainty infusus,‘ 1 hold in contempt these unmeaning glitterings and verbal artifices * that have come into the world since. For those worthy writers there was no need of keen and subtle conceits; their language is full and forcible, with natural and unfailing vigour; they are all epi- grams — not the tail only, but the head, stomach, and feet.

! Virgil, Aeneid, XII, 499.

This story of Messalina is taken from Tacitus, fnna/s, XI, 26, 27,

etc,

Mars, lord of arms, who rules over the cruel works of warfare, often

throws himself upon thy bosom, vanquished by the everlasting wound of love... . He feasts his eager looks with love, gazing at thee, god- dess; and as he reclines, his breath hangs on thy lips; and do thou, god- dess, as he reposes in the embrace of thy sacred body, pour forth sweet sayings from thy mouth. — Lucretius, I, 32-34, 36-40.

4 Of these words, those which do not appear in the passage of Lu- cretius are found in the verses of Virgil (Dixerat, etc.) quoted on p. 17, supra.

Ces menues pointes ef allusions verballes.

Gor gle