HISTORICAL AND LITERARY MEMORANDA. 



Pastoral, and that he should have them garlanded with ivy is the proper com- 

 pliment of Menalcas to the social usages of his own day 



" Two bowls I have, well turn'd, of beechen wood; 

 Both by divine Alcimedon were made ; 

 To neither of them yet the lip is laid ; 

 The lids are ivy, grapes in clusters lurk 

 Beneath the carving of the curious work." 1 



The origin of the ivy itself, as taught by Ovid, is scarcely worthy of notice ; 

 for, at the best, it is but fanciful foolishness ; but as it stands apart from the 

 ceremonies and customs just alluded to, space may here be found for a brief 

 quotation without bringing upon this humble endeavour the charge of needless 

 diffuseness. In the fourth book of the Metamorphoses occurs the story of Alcithoe 

 and her sisters transformed to bats, by the power of Bacchus, as a punishment for 

 their scorn of the bibulous deity. As translated by Mr. Eusden, the passage reads 

 ^ as follows : 



" But Mineus' daughters still their tasks pursue, 



To wickedness most obstinately true ; 



^ At Bacchus still they laugh, when all around, 



1 Unseen, the timbrels hoarse were heard to sound. 



Saffron and Myrrh their fragrant odours shed, 

 And now the present Deity they dread. 

 Strange to relate ! here ivy first was seen, 

 Along the distaff crept the wondrous green ; 

 Then sudden, springing vines began to bloom, 

 And the soft tendrils curl around the loom ; 

 While purple clusters dangling from on high, 

 Tinged the wrought purple with a second dye." 2 



Eeferences to the ivy in the classics are so numerous that they might afford 

 an agreeable subject for an extensive analysis, which would probably afford much 

 entertainment and some little instruction. A few of the first that occur to us will 

 suffice, however, for present purposes. In his fifth Pastoral, Virgil declares that 

 Daphnis first employed the ivy in commemoration of Bacchus : 



1 Dry den's translation, v. 55. The original text suggests that the fruit of the ivy was a 

 conspicuous feature of the carving I 



" Lenta quibus torno facili superaddita vitis ^j 



a Diffuses edera vestit pallente corymbos." 



^ ECLOGA III. 38, 39. 



2 Valpy's " Ovid," Book IV. v. 112. , 



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