PAP AVER PJIOEAS. 73 



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 sus- 

 tain ; f compare the passage I quoted from Plato, (' Crown of 



* See all the passages quoted by Liddell. 



f I find tliis chapter rather tiresome on re-reading it myself, and can- 

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

 of the few pieces of the ^Eneid which are purely and vulgarly imitative, 

 rendered also false as well as weak by the introducing sentence, " Vol- 

 vitur Euryalus leto," after which the simile of the drooping flower is 

 absurd. Of criticism, the chief use of which is to warn all sensible 

 men from such business, the following abstract of Diderot's notes on the 

 passage, given in the 'Saturday Review' for April 29th, 1871, is 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 fanci- 

 ful 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 ; * col- 

 lapsa ' marks an effort and a fall, and similar double duty is performed 

 by 'papavera,' the first two syllables symbolizing the poppy upright, the 

 last two the poppy bent. While thus pursuing his minute investiga- 

 tions, Diderot can scarcely help laughing at himself, and candidly owns 

 that he is open to the suspicion of discovering in the poem beauties 

 which have no existence. He therefore qualifies his eulogy by pointing 

 out two faults in the passage. ' Gravantur,' 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, 



