V. PAPAVER RHOEAS. I I 3 



Plato, (' Crown of Wild Olive,' p. 95 of the " Revised 

 Series," and p. 111 of the small edition) : " And 

 bore lightly the burden of gold and of possessions." 



worth preserving. (Was the French critic really not aware that Homer 

 had written the lines his own way ?) 



" Diderot illustrates his theory of poetical hieroglyphs by no quota- 

 tions, but we can show the manner of his minute and sometimes fanciful 

 criticism by repeating his analysis of the passage of Virgil wherein the 

 death of Euryalus is described : — 



' Pulchrosque per artus 

 It cruor, inque humeros cervix collapsa recumbit ; 

 Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro 

 Languescit moriens ; lassove papavera collo 

 Demisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur.' 



" The sound of ' It cruor,' according to Diderot, suggests the image of 

 a jet of blood ; ' cervix collapsa recumbit,' the fall of a dying man's 

 head upon his shoulder ; ' succisus ' imitates the use of a cutting 

 scythe (not plough) ; ' demisere ' is as soft as the eye of a flower ; 

 'gravantur.' on the other hand, has all the weight of a calyx, filled 

 with rain; 'collapsa' marks an effort and a fall, and similar double 

 duty is performed by ' papavera,' the first two syllables symboliz- 

 ing the poppy upright, the last two the poppy bent. While thus 

 pursuing his minute investigations, Diderot can scarcely help laughing 

 at himself, and candidly owns that he is open to the suspicion of dis- 

 covering in the poem beauties which have no existence. He therefore 

 qualifies his eulogy by pointing out two faults in the passage. ' Gra- 

 vantur,' notwithstanding the praise it has received, is a little too heavy 

 for the light head of a poppy, even when filled with water. As for 

 ' aratro,' coming as it does after the hiss of ' succisus,' it is altogether 

 abominable. Had Homer written the lines, he would have ended 

 with some hieroglyph, which would have continued the hiss or described 

 the fall of a flower. To the hiss of ' succisus ' Diderot is warmly 

 attached. Not by mistake, but in order to justify the sound, he ven- 

 tures to translate 'aratrum ' into ' scythe,' boldly and rightly declaring 

 in a marginal note that this is not the meaning of the word." 



8 



