Note II.

His ample shield

Is falsified, and round with javelins filled.---P. 61.

When I read this Eneid to many of my friends in company together, most of them quarrelled at the word falsified, as an innovation in our language. The fact is confessed; for I remember not to have read it in any English author, though perhaps it may be found in Spenser's "Fairy Queen;" but, suppose it be not there, why am I forbidden to borrow from the Italian (a polished language) the word which is wanting in my native tongue? Terence has often Grecised; Lucretius has followed his example, and pleaded for it--

Sic quia me cogit patrii sermonis egestas.

I

Virgil has confirmed it by his frequent practice; and even Cicero in prose, wanting terms of philosophy in the Latin tongue, has taken them from Aristotle's Greek. Horace has given us a rule for coining words, si Græco funte cadant; especially, when other words are joined with them, which explain the sense. use the word falsify in this place, to mean, that the shield of Turnus was not of proof against the spears and javelins of the Trojans, which had pierced it through and through (as we say) in many places. The words which accompany this new one, make my meaning plain, according to the precept which Horace gave. But I said I borrowed the word from the Italian. Vide Ariosto, Cant. 26.

Ma sì l'usbergo d'ambi era perfetto,

Che mai poter fulsarlo in nessun canto.

Falsar cannot otherwise be turned, than by falsified; for his shield was falsed, is not English. I might indeed have contented myself with saying, his shield was pierced, and bored, and stuck with javelins, nec sufficit umbo ictibus. They, who will not admit a new word, may take the old; the matter is not worth dispute.

Jupiter, calling a council of the gods, forbids them to engage in either party. At Æneas's return there is a bloody battle: Turnus killing Pallas; Æneas, Lausus and Mezentius. Mezentius is described as an atheist; Lausus as a pious and virtuous youth. The different actions and death of these two are the subject of a noble episode.

THE gates of heaven unfold: Jove summons all
The gods to council in the common hall.
Sublimely seated, he surveys from far
The fields, the camp, the fortune. of the war,
And all the inferior world. From first to last,
The sovereign senate in degrees are placed.
"Ye gods,

Then thus the almighty sire began
Natives or denizens of blest abodes!
From whence these murmurs, and this change of mind,
This backward fate from what was first designed?
Why thus protracted war, when my commands
Pronounced a peace, and gave the Latian lands?

a

What fear or hope on either part divides
Our heavens, and arms our powers on different sides?
A lawful time of war at length will come,
(Nor need your haste anticipate the doom,)
When Carthage shall contend the world with Rome;
Shall force the rigid rocks and Alpine chains,
And, like a flood, come pouring on the plains.
Then is your time for faction and debate,
For partial favour, and permitted hate.
Let now your immature dissention cease;
Sit quiet, and compose your souls to peace.
Thus Jupiter in few unfolds the charge;
But lovely Venus thus replies at large:-
"O power immense! eternal energy!
(For to what else protection can we fly?)
Seest thou the proud Rutulians, how they dare
In fields, unpunished, and insult my care?
How lofty Turnus vaunts amidst his train,
In shining arms triumphant on the plain?
Even in their lines and trenches they contend,
And scarce their walls the Trojan troops defend :
The town is filled with slaughter, and o'erfloats,
With a red deluge, their increasing moats.
Æneas, ignorant, and far from thence,
Has left a camp exposed, without defence.
This endless outrage shall they still sustain?
Shall Troy renewed be forced and fired again?
A second siege my banished issue fears,
And a new Diomede in arms appears.
One more audacious mortal will be found;
And I, thy daughter, wait another wound.
Yet, if, with fates averse, without thy leave,
The Latian lands my progeny receive,
Bear they the pains of violated law,
And thy protection from their aid withdraw.
But, if the gods their sure success foretell-
If those of heaven consent with those of hell,

To promise Italy; who dare debate
The power of Jove, or fix another fate?
What should I tell of tempests on the main,
Of Æolus usurping Neptune's reign?
Of Iris sent, with Bacchanalian heat

To inspire the matrons, and destroy the fleet?
Now Juno to the Stygian sky descends,
Solicits hell for aid, and arms the fiends.
That new example wanted yet above-
An act that well became the wife of Jove!
Alecto, raised by her, with rage inflames
The peaceful bosoms of the Latian dames.
Imperial sway no more exalts my mind;
(Such hopes I had indeed, while heaven was kind,)
Now let my happier foes possess my place,
Whom Jove prefers before the Trojan race;
And conquer they, whom you with conquest grace.
Since you can spare, from all your wide command,
No spot of earth, no hospitable land,

Which may my wandering fugitives receive;
(Since haughty Juno will not give you leave,)
Then, father, (if 1 still may use that name,)
By ruined Troy, yet smoking from the flame,
I beg you, let Ascanius, by my care,
Be freed from danger, and dismissed the war:
Inglorious let him live, without a crown:
The father may be cast on coasts unknown,
Struggling with fate; but let me save the son.
Mine is Cythera, mine the Cyprian towers:
In those recesses, and those sacred bowers,
Obscurely let him rest; his right resign
To promised empire, and his Julian line.
Then Carthage may the Ausonian towns destroy,
Nor fear the race of a rejected boy.

What profits it my son, to 'scape the fire,

Armed with his gods, and loaded with his sire;

To pass the perils of the seas and wind;
Evade the Greeks, and leave the war behind;
To reach the Italian shores; if, after all,
Our second Pergamus is doomed to fall?
Much better had he curbed his high desires,
And hovered o'er his ill-extinguished fires.
To Simoïs' banks the fugitives restore,

And give them back to war, and all the woes before."
Deep indignation swelled Saturnia's heart:
"And must I own," she said, "my secret smart-
What with more decence were in silence kept,
And, but for this unjust reproach, had slept?
Did god or man your favourite son advise,
With war unhoped the Latians to surprise?
By fate, you boast, and by the gods' decree,
He left his native land for Italy!

Confess the truth; by mad Cassandra, more
Than heaven, inspired, he sought a foreign shore.
Did I persuade to trust his second Troy

To the raw conduct of a beardless boy,

With walls unfinished, which himself forsakes,
And through the waves a wandering voyage takes?
When have I urged him meanly to demand

The Tuscan aid, and arm a quiet land?

Did I or Iris give this mad advice?

Or made the fool himself the fatal choice?

You think it hard, the Latians should destroy

With swords your Trojans, and with fires your Troy !
Hard and unjust indeed, for men to draw
Their native air, nor take a foreign law!
That Turnus is permitted still to live,
To whom his birth a god and goddess give!
But yet 'tis just and lawful for your line

To drive their fields, and force with fraud to join ;
Realms, not your own, among your clans divide,
And from the bridegroom tear the promised bride;