THE
WORKS
OF
JOHN DRYDEN,
NOW FIRST COLLECTED
IN EIGHTEEN VOLUMES.
ILLUSTRATED
WITH NOTES,
HISTORICAL, CRITICAL, AND EXPLANATORY,
AND
A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR,
BY
WALTER SCOTT, Esq.
VOL. XV.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR WILLIAM MILLER, ALBEMARLE STREET,
BY JAMES BALLANTYNE AND CO. EDINBURGH.
1808.
CONTENTS
OF
VOLUME FIFTEENTH.
ÆNEÏS,
BOOK VIII.
ARGUMENT.
The war being now begun, both the generals make all possible preparations. Turnus sends to Diomedes. Æneas goes in person to beg succours from Evander and the Tuscans. Evander receives him kindly, furnishes him with men, and sends his son Pallas with him. Vulcan, at the request of Venus, makes arms for her son Æneas, and draws on his shield the most memorable actions of his posterity.
When Turnus had assembled all his powers,
His standard planted on Laurentum's towers,
When now the sprightly trumpet, from afar,
Had given the signal of approaching war,
Had roused the neighing steeds to scour the fields,
While the fierce riders clattered on their shields,
Trembling with rage, the Latian youth prepare
To join the allies, and headlong rush to war.
Fierce Ufens, and Messapus, led the crowd,
With bold Mezentius, who blasphemed aloud.
These through the country took their wasteful course,
The fields to forage, and to gather force.
Then Venulus to Diomede they send,
To beg his aid Ausonia to defend,
Declare the common danger, and inform
The Grecian leader of the growing storm:
"Æneas, landed on the Latian coast,
With banished gods, and with a baffled host,
Yet now aspired to conquest of the state,
And claimed a title from the gods and fate;
What numerous nations in his quarrel came,
And how they spread his formidable name.
What he designed, what mischiefs might arise,
If fortune favoured his first enterprize,
Was left for him to weigh, whose equal fears,
And common interest, was involved in theirs."
}
{ While Turnus and the allies thus urge the war,
{ The Trojan, floating in a flood of care,
{ Beholds the tempest which his foes prepare.
This way, and that, he turns his anxious mind;
Thinks and rejects the counsels he designed;
Explores himself in vain, in every part,
And gives no rest to his distracted heart.
So, when the sun by day, or moon by night,
Strike on the polished brass their trembling light,[1]
The glittering species here and there divide,
And cast their dubious beams from side to side;
Now on the walls, now on the pavement play,
And to the cieling flash the glaring day.
'Twas night; and weary nature lulled asleep
The birds of air, and fishes of the deep,
}
{ And beasts, and mortal men. The Trojan chief
{ Was laid on Tyber's banks, oppressed with grief,
{ And found, in silent slumber, late relief.
Then, through the shadows of the poplar wood,
Arose the father of the Roman flood;
An azure robe was o'er his body spread,
A wreath of shady reeds adorned his head:
Thus, manifest to sight, the god appeared,
And with these pleasing words his sorrow cheered:—
"Undoubted offspring of etherial race,
O long expected in this promised place!
Who, through the foes, hast borne thy banished gods,
Restored them to their hearths, and old abodes—
This is thy happy home, the clime where fate
Ordains thee to restore the Trojan state.
Fear not! The war shall end in lasting peace,
And all the rage of haughty Juno cease.
And that this nightly vision may not seem
The effect of fancy, or an idle dream,
A sow beneath an oak shall lie along,
All white herself, and white her thirty young.
When thirty rolling years have run their race,
Thy son Ascanius, on this empty space,
Shall build a royal town, of lasting fame,
Which from this omen shall receive the name.
Time shall approve the truth.—For what remains,
And how with sure success to crown thy pains,
With patience next attend. A banished band,
Driven with Evander from the Arcadian land,
Have planted here, and placed on high their walls;
Their town the founder Pallanteum calls,
Derived from Pallas, his great grandsire's name:
But the fierce Latians old possession claim,
With war infesting the new colony.
These make thy friends, and on their aid rely.
To thy free passage I submit my streams.
Wake, son of Venus, from thy pleasing dreams;
And, when the setting stars are lost in day,
To Juno's power thy just devotion pay;
With sacrifice the wrathful queen appease:
Her pride at length shall fall, her fury cease.
When thou return'st victorious from the war,
Perform thy vows to me with grateful care.
The god am I, whose yellow water flows
Around these fields, and fattens as it goes:
Tyber my name—among the rolling floods,
Renowned on earth, esteemed among the gods.
This is my certain seat. In times to come,
My waves shall wash the walls of mighty Rome."
He said; and plunged below. While yet he spoke,
His dream Æneas and his sleep forsook.
He rose, and, looking up, beheld the skies
With purple blushing, and the day arise.
Then water in his hollow palm he took
From Tyber's flood, and thus the powers bespoke:—
"Laurentian nymphs, by whom the streams are fed,
And father Tyber, in thy sacred bed
Receive Æneas, and from danger keep.
Whatever fount, whatever holy deep,
Conceals thy watery stores—where'er they rise,
And, bubbling from below, salute the skies—
Thou, king of horned floods, whose plenteous urn
Suffices fatness to the fruitful corn,
For this thy kind compassion of our woes,
Shalt share my morning song, and evening vows.
But, oh! be present to thy people's aid,
And firm the gracious promise thou hast made."
Thus having said, two galleys, from his stores,
With care he chuses, mans, and fits with oars.
Now on the shore the fatal swine is found—
Wonderous to tell!—She lay along the ground:
Her well-fed offspring at her udders hung;
She white herself, and white her thirty young.
Æneas takes the mother and her brood,
And all on Juno's altar are bestowed.[2]
The following night, and the succeeding day,
Propitious Tyber smoothed his watery way:
He rolled his river back, and poised he stood,
A gentle swelling, and a peaceful flood.
The Trojans mount their ships; they put from shore,
Borne on the waves, and scarcely dip an oar.
Shouts from the land give omen to their course,
And the pitched vessels glide with easy force.
The woods and waters wonder at the gleam
Of shields, and painted ships that stem the stream.
One summer's night and one whole day they pass
Betwixt the greenwood shades, and cut the liquid glass.
The fiery sun had finished half his race,
Looked back, and doubted in the middle space,
When they from far beheld the rising towers,
The tops of sheds, and shepherds' lowly bowers,
Thin as they stood, which, then of homely clay,
Now rise in marble, from the Roman sway.
These cots (Evander's kingdom, mean and poor)
The Trojan saw, and turned his ships to shore.
'Twas on a solemn day: the Arcadian states,
The king and prince, without the city gates,
Then paid their offerings in a sacred grove
To Hercules, the warrior son of Jove.
Thick clouds of rolling smoke involve the skies,
And fat of entrails on his altar fries.
But, when they saw the ships that stemmed the flood,
And glittered through the covert of the wood,
They rose with fear, and left the unfinished feast,
Till dauntless Pallas re-assured the rest
To pay the rites. Himself without delay
A javelin seized, and singly took his way,
}
{ Then gained a rising ground, and called from far:—
{ "Resolve me, strangers, whence, and what you are;
{ Your business here; and bring you peace or war?"
High on the stern Æneas took his stand,
And held a branch of olive in his hand,
While thus he spoke:—"The Phrygians' arms you see,
Expelled from Troy, provoked in Italy
By Latian foes, with war unjustly made—
At first affianced, and at last betrayed.
This message bear:—The Trojans and their chief
Bring holy peace, and beg the king's relief."
Struck with so great a name, and all on fire,
The youth replies:—"Whatever you require,
Your fame exacts. Upon our shores descend,
A welcome guest, and, what you wish, a friend."
He said, and, downward hasting to the strand,
Embraced the stranger prince, and joined his hand.
Conducted to the grove, Æneas broke
The silence first, and thus the king bespoke:—
"Best of the Greeks! to whom, by fate's command,
I bear these peaceful branches in my hand—
Undaunted I approach you, though I know
Your birth is Grecian, and your land my foe;
From Atreus though your ancient lineage came,
And both the brother kings your kindred claim;
Yet, my self-conscious worth, your high renown,
Your virtue, through the neighbouring nations blown,
Our fathers' mingled blood, Apollo's voice,
Have led me hither, less by need than choice.
Our father Dardanus, as fame has sung,
And Greeks acknowledge, from Electra sprung:
Electra from the loins of Atlas came—
Atlas, whose head sustains the starry frame.
Your sire is Mercury, whom long before
On cold Cyllene's top fair Maia bore.
Maia the fair, on fame if we rely,
Was Atlas daughter, who sustains the sky.
Thus from one common source our streams divide;
Ours is the Trojan, yours the Arcadian side.
}
{ Raised by these hopes, I sent no news before,
{ Nor asked your leave, nor did your faith implore;
{ But come, without a pledge, my own ambassador.
The same Rutulians, who with arms pursue
The Trojan race, are equal foes to you.
Our host expelled, what farther force can stay
The victor troops from universal sway?
Then will they stretch their power athwart the land,
And either sea from side to side command.
Receive our offered faith, and give us thine;
Ours is a generous and experienced line:
We want not hearts nor bodies for the war;
In council cautious, and in fields we dare."
He said; and, while he spoke, with piercing eyes
Evander viewed the man with vast surprise—
Pleased with his action, ravished with his face;
Then answered briefly, with a royal grace:—
"O valiant leader of the Trojan line,
In whom the features of thy father shine!
How I recall Anchises! how I see
His motions, mien, and all my friend, in thee!
Long though it be, 'tis fresh within my mind,
When Priam to his sister's court designed
A welcome visit, with a friendly stay,
And through the Arcadian kingdom took his way.
Then, past a boy, the callow down began
To shade my chin, and call me first a man.
I saw the shining train with vast delight,
And Priam's goodly person pleased my sight:
But great Anchises, far above the rest,
With awful wonder fired my youthful breast.
I longed to join, in friendship's holy bands,
Our mutual hearts, and plight our mutual hands.
I first accosted him: I sued, I sought,
And, with a loving force, to Pheneus brought.
He gave me, when at length constrained to go,
A Lycian quiver and a Gnossian bow,
A Lycian quiver and a Gnossian bow,
}
{ A vest embroidered, glorious to behold,
{ And two rich bridles, with their bits of gold,
{ Which my son's coursers in obedience hold.
The league you ask, I offer, as your right;
And, when to-morrow's sun reveals the light,
}
{ With swift supplies you shall be sent away.
{ Now celebrate, with us, this solemn day,
{ Whose holy rites admit no long delay.
Honour our annual feast; and take your seat,
With friendly welcome, at a homely treat."
Thus having said, the bowls (removed for fear)
The youths replaced, and soon restored the cheer.
On sods of turf he set the soldiers round:
A maple throne, raised higher from the ground,
Received the Trojan chief; and, o'er the bed,
A lion's shaggy hide, for ornament, they spread.
}
{ The loaves were served in canisters; the wine
{ In bowls; the priest renewed the rites divine:
{ Broiled entrails are their food, and beef's continued chine.
But, when the rage of hunger was repressed,
Thus spoke Evander to his royal guest:—
"These rites, these altars, and this feast, O king,
From no vain fears or superstition spring,
Or blind devotion, or from blinder chance,
Or heady zeal, or brutal ignorance:
But, saved from danger, with a grateful sense,
The labours of a god we recompense.
See, from afar, yon rock that mates the sky,
About whose feet such heaps of rubbish lie;
Such indigested ruin; bleak and bare,
How desert now it stands, exposed in air!
'Twas once a robber's den, inclosed around
With living stone, and deep beneath the ground,
The monster Cacus, more than half a beast,
This hold, impervious to the sun, possessed.
The pavement ever foul with human gore;
Heads, and their mangled members, hung the door.
Vulcan this plague begot; and, like his sire,
Black clouds he belched, and flakes of livid fire.