100 PKOSEItPINA. 



By Castianeira, that for form was like celestial breed. 

 And as a crimson poppy-flower, surcharged with his seed, 

 And vernal humours falling thick, declines his heavy brow, 

 So, a-oneside, his helmet's weight his fainting head did bow.' 



Next, Pope : 



" He missed the mark; but pierced Gorgythio's heart, 

 And drenched in royal blood the thirsty dart : 

 (Fair Castianeira, nymph of form divine, 

 This offspring added to King Priam's line). 

 As full-blown poppies, overcharged with rain, 

 Decline the head, and drooping kiss the plain, 

 So sinks the youth : his beauteous head, depressed 

 Beneath his helmet, drops upon his breast." 



13. I give yon the two passages in full, trusting that 

 you may so feel the beeomingness of the one, and the 

 gracelessness of the other. But note tarther, in the Ho- 

 meric passage, one subtlety which cannot enough be 

 marked even in Chapman's English, that his second word, 

 revere, is employed by him both of the stooping of ears of 

 corn, under wind, and of Troy stooping to its ruin ; * and 

 otherwise, in good Greek writers, the word is marked as 

 having such specific sense of men's drooping under weight ; 

 or towards death, under the burden of fortune which they 

 have no more strength to sustain ; f compare the passage 



* See all the passages quoted by Liddell. 



f I find this chapter rather tiresome on re-reading it myself, and cancel 

 some farther criticism of the imitation of this passage by Virgil, one of 

 the few pieces of the JEneid which are purely and vulgarly imitative, 



