"Not Pallas, nay, not Envy's self, could fault In all the work detect."

Pallas herself had taught her, but she dis- | which love for mortal women had driven dains such praise ;-her art was all her own. them. But her work is so perfect that Let Pallas come to compare her skill. And Pallas came, but at first in shape of an ancient dame, who counsels the bold maiden to be content with victory over mortal competitors, but to avoid dangerous challenge to the gods. The advice is given in vain. Arachne rushes upon her fate. The goddess reveals herself, and the contest was begun. An admirable piece of word-painting fol

lows:

"The looms were set,-the webs
Were hung: beneath their fingers nimbly plied
The subtle fabrics grew, and warp and woof,
Transverse, with shuttle and with slay compact
Were pressed in order fair. And either girt
Her mantle close, and eager wrought; the toil
Itself was pleasure to the skilful hands
That knew so well their task.

hue

The furious goddess smites her rival twelve times on the forehead:

The high-souled Maid
Such insult not endured, and round her neck
Indignant twined the suicidal noose,
And so had died. But as she hung, some ruth
Stirred in Minerva's breast:-the pendent
form

thou still

She raised, and 'Live!' she said—but hang
For ever, wretch! and through all future time
Even to thy latest race bequeath thy doom!'
And as she parted, sprinkled her with juice
Of aconite.
With Tyrian
With venom of that drug
Infected dropped her tresses, nose and ear
Were lost; her form to smallest bulk com
pressed

Of purple blushed the texture, and all shades
Of colour, blending imperceptibly

Each into each. So, when the wondrous bow
What time some passing shower hath dashed

the sun

Spans with its mighty arch the vault of Heaven,

A thousand colours deck it, different all,
Yet all so subtly interfused that each
Seems one with that which joins it, and the eye
But by the contrast of the extremes perceives
The intermediate change. And last, with

thread

Of gold embroidery pictured, on the web Lifelike expressed, some antique fable glowed."

Pallas pictures the Hill of Mars at Athens, where the gods had sat in judgment in the strife between herself and Neptune as to who should be the patron deity of that fair city.

"There stood the God Of Seas, and with his trident seemed to smite The rugged rock, and from the cleft out-sprang The Steed that for its author claimed the town. Herself, with shield and spear of keenest barb And helm, she painted; on her bosom gleamed

The Ægis: with her lance's point she struck
The earth, and from its breast the Olive
bloomed,

Pale, with its berried fruit :-and all the gods
Admiring gazed, adjudging in that strife
The victory hers."

Arachne, disloyal, as the daughters of Pierus had been, to the Lords of Heaven, pictures them in the base disguises to

A head minutest crowned;-to slenderest legs
Jointed on either side her fingers changed:
Her body but a bag, whence still she draws
Her filmy threads, and, with her ancient art,
Weaves the fine meshes of her Spider's web."

Leaving the goddess in the enjoyment of
this doubtful victory, the story passes on to
the tale of Niobe. What has been given
occupies in the original a space about equi-
valent to a book and a half.

Sometimes Ovid gives us an opportu nity of comparing him with a great mas ter of his own art. A notable instance of the kind is the story of how Orpheus went down to the lower world in search of his lost Eurydice; how he won her by the charms of his song from the unpitying Gods of death, and lost her again on the very borders of life.

"So sang he, and according to his plaint,
As wailed the strings, the bloodless Ghosts
were moved

To weeping. By the lips of Tantalus
Unheeded slipped the wave;-Ixion's wheel
Forgot to whirl; the Vulture's bloody feast
Was stayed; awhile the Belides forbore
Their leaky urns to dip ;-and Sisyphus
Sate listening on his stone. Then first, they

say,

The iron cheeks of the Eumenides
Were wet with pity. Of the nether realm
Nor king nor Queen had heart to say him nay.
Forth from a host of new-descended Shades
Eurydice was called; and, halting yet

Slow with her recent wound she came-alive,
On one condition to her spouse restored,
That, till Avernus' vale is passed and earth
Regained, he look not backward, or the boon
Is null and forfeit. Through the silent realm
Upward against the steep and fronting hill
Dark with obscurest gloom, the way he led :
And now the upper air was all but won,
When, fearful lest the toil o'er-task her
strength

And yearning to behold the form he loved,
An instant back he looked,-and back the
Shade

That instant fled! The arms that wildly strove
To clasp and stay her clasped but yielding air!
No word of plaint even in that second Death
Against her Lord she uttered,-how could

Love

agape,

No reader will doubt with which poet be allowed that Ovid is strong in what the general superiority lies; yet it must may be called his own peculiar line. There is a noble tenderness and a genuine pathos in the parting of the two lovers, which is characteristic of the poet's genius.

One of the longest as well as the most striking episodes in the whole book is the contest between Ajax and Ulysses for the arms of the dead Achilles; and it has the additional interest of recalling the declamatory studies of the poet's youth. It is throughout a magnificent piece of rhetoric. The blunt energy of Ajax, and the craft and persuasiveness of Ulysses, are admirably given. The elder Seneca, in the poet was indebted for some of his mathe passage already quoted, mentions that cius Latro, one of whose declamations on terials and language to his teacher, Poreither heard or read. One phrase is spe"The Contest for the Arms" Seneca had cified as having been borrowed from this source. It is the fiery challenge with which Ajax clenches his argument :

:

Enough of idle words! let hands, not tongues, Show what we are!

ranks

Fling 'mid yon hostile

Our hero's armour: bid us fetch it thence:

With livid snakes; while Cerberus stood
Nor moved the triple horror of his jaw;
And in charmed air Ixion's wheel was stayed. And be it his who first shall bring it back!"
And now with step retreating he had shunned
All peril; and the lost one, given back,
Was nearing the sweet breath of upper air,
Following behind such terms the gods im-
posed-

When some wild frenzy seized the lover's heart
Unheeding, well, were pardon known in hell,
Well to be pardoned. Still he stood, and saw,
Ah me! forgetful, mastered all by love,
Saw, at the very border of the day,

The piece is too long to be given (it fills
more than half of the thirteenth book), ·
and its effect would be lost in extracts.
A few lines, however, from the beginning
may be quoted; and indeed nothing
throughout is more finely put. It may be
as well to mention that the ships spoken of
had been in imminent danger of destruction

Heaven!

O race of mortal men! what lust, what vice
Of appetite unhallowed, makes ye bold
To gorge your greed on Being like your own?
Be wiselier warned :-forbear the barbarous
feast,
The willing labourer of your fields devour!
Nor in each bloody morsel that you chew

vindication from the possible charge of being | Yet reeking torn, they read the hest of childish fables, vacant of any real meaning, and unworthy of a serious pen. The passage which follows refers to a practical rule in which we may see a natural inference from the philosophical dogma. If man is so closely allied to the lower animals-if their forms are made, equally with his, the re: ceptacles of the one divine animating spirit then there is a certain impiety in his slaughtering them to satisfy his wants. Strangely enough, the progress or revolution of human thought has brought science again to the doctrine of man's kindred with the animals, though it seems altogether averse to the merciful conclusion which Pythagoras drew from it.

*

*

*

*

*

All changes: nothing perishes! Now here,
Now there, the vagrant spirit roves at will,
The shifting tenant of a thousand homes:-
Now, elevate, ascends from beast to man,
Now, retrograde, descends from man
beast ;-

to

But never dies!-Upon the tablet's page
Erased, and written fresh, the characters
Take various shape, - the wax remains the

It has been handed down to us on good authority that Virgil, in his last illness, desired his friends to commit his "Eneid" to the flames. It had not received his final corrections, and he was unwilling that it should go down to posterity less perfect than he could have made it. Evidences of this incompleteness are to be found, especially in the occasional inconsistencies of the narrative. Critics have busied themselves in discohave been corrected in revision. The desire, vering or imagining other faults which might though it doubtless came from a mind enfeebled by morbid conditions of the body, lieve as much of what Ovid tells us of his was probably sincere. We can hardly be own intentions about the "Metamorphoses:" "As for the verses which told of the changed forms-an unlucky work, which its author's banishment interrupted-these in the hour of my departure I put, sorrowing, as I put many other of my good things, into the flames with my own hands." Doubtless he did so ; nothing could have more naturally displayed his vexation. But he could hardly have been ignorant that in destroying his manuscript he was not destroying his work. "As they