OUR QUEEN OF BEAUTY. 39 



head, loafing about the mansion of Papa Tyndarus) — 

 Helen, fair and frail, rosa imuidi non rosa imiiida, had, we 

 are told, cheeks like a Rose, though not perhaps a blush one. 

 Other belles of the past had — so Anacreon, Theocritus, and 

 the poets generally, inform us — rosy arms, rosy necks, rosy 

 feet, and — delicacy forbids me to translate ^ohoy.oX'jrog and 

 ^odoTwyog, "Burning Sappho" — it would have been more 

 gentlemanly, I think, if Byron had called her gushing — 

 crowned the Rose Queen of Flowers, being herself, accord- 

 ing to Meleager, the Rose of Poesy ; and her readers 

 crowned themselves with the Rose (one can't help wonder- 

 ing whether the nimble earwig ever ran down their Grecian 

 noses), and vied with each other, at their banquets, ex'rX^rrs/v 

 rovg (Spovvovg^ to astonish the Browns, with Roses. There was 

 a flower-market at Athens, as in Covent Garden now, 

 where the young swells bought for the Honourable Miss 

 Rhodanthe and for the Lady Rhodopis bouquets of the 

 blushing Rose ; and then, as now, he who would not or 

 could not speak boldly to his Maid of Athens, 



Zwri /J.OV, ads ayaTru, 



declared his love by these 



" Token-flowers that tell 

 What words can never speak so well." 



