274 LANDSCAPE 



of this collection, and its prolonged influence through modern 

 literature has there been traced. 1 I shall not therefore dwell 

 on these compositions here. But in order to show how mural 

 painting affected literature, and how a refined feeling for 

 natural beauty was then combined with Hellenic mythology, 

 I will translate the opening lines of his mystical idyl, ' Cupido 

 Cruci Affixus,' together with its dedication in prose to the 

 poet's 'son' Gregorius. The verses describe a fresco in a 

 friend's house, which represented the crucifixion of Cupid by 

 the heroines in Elysium dames of ancient story, who had 

 long since died for love and the god's flagellation by his 

 mother with a scourge of roses. 



' Tell me,' begins the dedicatory epistle ; ' did you ever 

 see some shadowy fancy painted on a wall ? I am sure you 

 have, and that you have kept it in remembrance. At Treves, 

 for instance, in the dining-room of yEolus. there is this picture 

 which I will describe : Cupid is being crucified by women 

 who were lovers not those of our times, sinners by their own 

 will but dames of the heroic age, who justify their conscience 

 and force the god to bow they whose fate in the fields of 

 lamentation our Virgil hath sung. I gazed upon this work 

 of art with admiration, both for its beauty and its subject. 

 Soon afterwards, the emotion of wonder in my mind merged 

 in a foolish impulse to write verses. Except the theme, 

 nothing pleases me in this production. Yet I submit my 

 by-blow of the Muses to your kind attention. We love 

 even our warts and scars if they are part of us, and not 

 content with having paid the debt to our own natural frailty, 

 seek that these defects in us should win affection. Yet why 

 should I go about to win from you a favourable hearing for 

 the eclogue? I am sure that you will take with kindness 

 what you know to be a thing of mine. This I regard more 

 than that you should praise it. Farewell. 



' In those shadowy fields whereof the Muse of Maro sings, 



where myrtle groves yield gloomy shelter to lost souls of 



lovers, the dames of old were once assembled for their mystic 



rites, and each bore emblems of her doom according as she 



1 ' The Pathos of the Rose in Poetry.' 



