And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber;
Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,

And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile
In loathsome beds; and leav'st the kingly couch,

A watch-case, or a common 'larum-bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge,
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deaf'ning clamours in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes-
Can'st thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
And, in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."
Yet he does sleep; and as the Prince watches
by him, the latter exclaims:

"Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow,
Being so troublesome a bedfellow ?

O polished perturbation! golden care!
That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide
To many a watchful night!-sleep with it now!
Yet not so sound, and half so deeply sweet,
As he, whose brow, with homely biggin bound,
Snores out the watch of night.'
Act iv. 4.

Sir Richard Blackmore, too; Creation, b. iv.: "Familiar horrors haunt the monarch's head,

And thoughts, ill-boding, from the downy bed Chase gentle sleep; black cares the soul infest, And broider'd stars adorn a troubled breast." "Morpheus! the humble god that dwells In cottages and smoky cells,

Hates gilded roofs and beds of down, And, though he fears no prince's frown, Flies from the circle of a crown." Sir John Denham, Song. Young's lines are well known: "Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy Sleep! He like the world, his ready visit pays Where Fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes;

Swift on his downy pinion flies from woe, And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.' The Complaint, Night i. 1-5. "No frowning care yon bless'd apartment sees, There sleep retires, and finds a couch of ease. Kind dreams, that fly remorse, and pamper'd wealth,

There shed the smiles of innocence and health." Savage, Wanderer, c. 1.

A place of ambushment around the folds, Nor does he prowl about the herds by night: A fiercer pang subdues him. Craven deer And flying harts now both among the hounds,

And round the homesteads wander. Now the brood

Of the illimitable sea, and all the tribe Of swimming [creatures] on the farthest strand,

Like shipwrecked corses, washes up the

wave;

Against their wont to rivers fly the seals; And dies, within his winding-shroud ensconced 750

In vain, the adder, and with scales erect The thunder-stricken hydri. E'en to birds Beneath the lofty cloud their life they leave. Unrighteous is the air, and, headlong fallen, Moreo'er, nor now avails it that their food Is changed, and sought prescriptions harm: the chiefs

Have yielded,-Chiron son of Phillyra, Melampus, too, of Amythaon sprung. Storms wan Tisiphone, and, into light Let loose from Stygian murk, before her drives 760 Diseases and Affright; and, day by day Uprising higher, she her rav'nous head Advances. With the bleating of the flocks, And frequent bellowings, streams, and withered banks,

And sloping hills, resound. And now by troops

She havoc deals, and in the very stalls Piles corses, melted with the loathsome bane ;

Till in the earth to hide them, and in pits To hearse, they learn. For neither in the hides

Was service, nor the flesh can any [swain] Or cleanse in waters, or with flame o'er

The mould'ring woof, have they the pow'r.
Nay e'en

If any had the loathsome garbs essayed,
Inflammatory blains and filthy sweat
His fetid limbs pursued; nor was the time

Thereafter long, when, as he pauses still, His tainted joints the sacred fire would eat.

778. "As he pauses;" i. e., to throw off the infected dress.

NEXT the ethereal honey's heav'nly boons Will I pursue: this portion, too, do thou Regard, Mæcenas. Shows of pigmy things, That claim thy wonder,-both the highsouled chiefs,

And habits, and pursuits, and clans, and wars,

Of a whole nation will I duly sing.
Upon a petty [theme] the travail, yet
Not petty the renown, if adverse gods
Permit one, and invoked Apollo hears.

In the first place, a resting-spot and post Must for thy bees be sought, whereto may

lie

II

IV.

| For all they widely waste, and e'en [the bees],

While flying, in their mouth they bear away,
Delicious diet for their ruthless nests.
But crystal springs, and plashes green with

moss,

And heat dissolves the same, to fluid turned : Each force for bees alike is to be feared. 50 Nor in their homes in vain with rivalry The narrow vents with wax do they besmear,

And close the rims with fucus and with flowers,

And, gathered for these very services, A cement keep, more glutinous than e'en The birdlime and the Phrygian Ida's pitch. Yea oftentimes in excavated shrouds, (If true is rumor,) underneath the earth Their household have they hugged, and deep

Been found both in the vaulted pumicerocks, 60

And grot of [some] heart-eaten tree. Do thou,

However, both with glossy mud anoint Their chinky chambers, warming them around,

And throw across them thin [supplies of] leaves.

Nor overnear their homes the yew allow,
Nor burn thy coral crabs upon the hearth,
Nor place reliance on the fen profound,
Or where the smell of mire is rank, or
where

The vaulted rocks with verberation ring,
And echo of the voice impinged rebounds.

For what remains, what time the golden Sun

71

53.

Fucus;" i. e., "propolis."

79. Milton has a very beautiful simile of bees issuing from the hive on a fine day; P. L., b. i.: "As bees

In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters: they among fresh dews and flowers
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubb'd with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state affairs."

Thomson is also highly successful; Spring, 508:

They of themselves within their inmost cots
Will bury them, in fashion [all] their own.
But if they shall have issued to the fight,

"Here their delicious task the fervent bees,
In swarming millions, tend: around, athwart,
Through the soft air, the busy nations fly,
Cling to the bud, and, with inserted tube,
Suck its pure essence, its ethereal soul;
And oft, with bolder wing, they soaring dare
The purple heath, or where the wild thyme grows,
And yellow load them with the luscious spoil."
"Yet hark, how through the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!
The insect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honied spring,

And float amid the liquid noon:
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some show their gayly-gilded trim,
Quick-glancing to the sun."

Gray, Ode to Spring.
"Thick as the bees, that with the spring renew
Their flowery toils, and sip the fragrant dew,
When the wing'd colonies first tempt the sky,
O'er dusky fields and shaded waters fly,
Or, settling, seize the sweets the blossoms yield,
And a low murmur runs along the field."
Pope, Temple of Fame.
This and other passages in Virgil call to mind
Pope's beautiful description of the Sylphs in the
Rape of the Lock, c. ii.:

"Some to the sun their insect wings unfold,

Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold;
Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight,
Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light,
Loose to the wind their airy garments flew,
Thin glittering textures of the filmy dew,
Dipt in the richest tincture of the skies,
Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes;
While every beam new transient colours flings,
Colours that change whene'er they wave their
wings."

92. "So swarming bees that, on a summer's day In airy rings and wild meanders play,

Charm'd with the brazen sound, their wanderings

(For many a time on monarchs twain a feud Hath stalked with mighty hubbub, and forthwith

The spirits of the commons and their hearts Throbbing for war, we may afar foreknow; For those that loiter does the warlike bray Of grating bronze upbraid, and there is heard

A sound, that apes the trumpet's broken blasts :)

100

Then in commotion they together flock, And sparkle with their pinions, and their stings

Point sharp upon their beaks, and fit their thews,

And round the king, and at the very tent Of their commander, muster they in crowds, And challenge with their lusty cries the foe. So, when they have secured a cloudless spring,

And open plains, they sally from the gates; In heav'n on high 'tis battle; booms a din; Huddled they cluster in a mighty ball 110 And headlong drop:- -no thicker in the air The hail, nor from the shaken holm pours down

So thick [a show'r] of mast. [The kings]

themselves

Throughout the central ranks, with noted wings,

Wield giant spirits in a puny breast;
E'en for so long determined not to yield,
Until the overwhelming conqueror

Or these, or those, hath forced to show their backs,

none seems satisfactory, and therefore a different view of the part which is to be considered elliptical, is here taken. According to this, the embarassment attending que in continuoque appears to be removed; while the objection, fairly raised by Wagner against the views of Heyne and Voss, is in a great measure avoided.

And again:

"In a small room large heart enclosed." And Shakespeare, K. H. V., ii. Chorus: "O England!-model to thy inward greatness, Like little body with a mighty heart." "I never saw Such noble fury in so poor a thing." Cymbeline, v. 5. Milton in the same way, in Samson Agonistes: "Go, baffled coward! lest I run upon thee, Though in these chains, bulk without spirit vast." Dryden, in speaking of the dismay of the Dutch fleet, inverts the idea:

"Faint sweats all down their mighty members run; Vast bulks which little souls but ill supply." Annus Mirabilis, 70.

(Lest in his waste he mischief thee,) consign To death; allow the nobler in the court, Untenanted, to reign. The one will prove With gold-encrusted spangles in a blaze. For twain the species be: this nobler [king] Both in his guise distinguished, brilliant, too,

With ruddy scales; that other, grim with sloth, 130

And trailing, base, a breadth of paunch. As twain

The monarchs' figures, so the commons' frames.

For some in hideousness are rough; as

still

homes; Himself let chafe his hand with galling toil; Himself set fruiting saplings in the ground, And loving waters o'er them draw in rills. And truly, towards my travail's farthest bound 162

Were I not now my canvas drawing in,
And hasting on to veer my prow to land,
I peradventure, too, might sing what pains
Of cultivation gardens rich would deck,
And doubly-blooming Pæstum's beds of

rose;

And how the endive-plants in runnels quaffed

Might take delight, and banks with parsley green;

And, writhing through the grass, the cucumber 170

Swell out into a paunch. Nor daffodil,
Late-flow'ring, or the lithe acanthus' stalk,
Could I have passed unsung, and ivies wan,
And myrtle-shrubs enamored of the shores.
For I recall to mind, that I beneath
The stately towers of Ebalia, where
The dark Galesus dews the golden tilths,
An agèd swain of Corycus had seen,
To whom few acres of abandoned ground
Belonged; nor fruitful was that [soil] thro'
steers,
180

Nor fit for cattle, nor for Bacchus meet.
Yet even here his potherbs, thin [in row],
Among the brakes and snowy lilies round,
And vervains, planting, fine-grained poppy,
too,

The wealth of monarchs in his mind he matched ;

And, late at night returning to his home, His boards he cumbered with unpurchased

cates.

The first was he in spring to cull the rose,

161. Or, if irriget be taken in its secondary, and imbres in its primary sense:

"And sprinkle over them the loving showers." Ben Jonson.

66

185. My mind's a kingdom."

"For 'tis the mind that makes the body rich." Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, iv. 3. "I want not, for my mind affordeth wealth."

Robert Greene, The Hermit's Verses.
"No, Lucio, he's a king,

A true right king, that dares doe aught, save wrong,
Feares nothing mortall but to be unjust,
Who is not blowne up with the flattering puffes
Of spungy sycophants, who stands unmoved,
Despite the justling of opinion."

"This, Lucio, is a king,
And of this empire every man's possest,
That's worth his soule.'

Marston, Antonio and Mellida, P. 1, iv. 4.

With pregnant bees, and many a swarm, was first

To overflow; and from squeezed combs to force

The frothing honeys. He had limes and pine

Of fullest yield; and with as many fruits
In infant blossom as the teemful tree
Had robed itself, so many it retained 200
In autumn ripe. He also into rows
Transplanted far-grown elms, and flinty
pear,

And black-thorn stocks, already bearing plums,

And plane, to topers now affording shade. But these, in sooth, do I, shut out by bounds Too strict, pass over, and to other [bards] To be recorded after me I leave.

Now come, what instincts Jove himself to bees

Assigned, will I unfold; for what reward The Curets' tuneful sounds and clanking bronze

210

They, tracing, fed the monarch of the sky Beneath the grot of Dicte. They alone Have sons in common, city-mansions shared

192. See note on Geo. ii. v. 368.

201.

213, &c.

"The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime." Shakespeare, Sonnet 97. "For so work the honey bees; Creatures that, by a rule of nature, teach The act of order to a people's kingdom. They have a king and officers of sorts: Where some, like magistrates, correct at home; Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;

Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,

Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;

Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent royal of their emperor :
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The
poor mechanic porters crouding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone."

Shakespeare, K. H. V., i. 2.
"The careful insect midst his works I view,
Now from the flowers exhaust the fragrant dew;
With golden treasures load his little thighs,