Heavy the third and stif, he sinks apace,
And, though 't is down-hid all, but creeps along
the race.

Now sapless on the verge of death he stands,
Contemplating his former feet, and hands,
And, Milo-like, his slacken'd sinews sees,
And wither'd arms, once fit to cope with Her-
cules,

Unable now to shake, much less to tear, the trees.

So Helen wept, when her too faithful glass Reflected to her eyes the ruins of her face: Wond'ring what charms her ravishers could spy, Tc force her twice, or e'en but once enjoy! Thy teeth, devouring time, thine,envious age, On things below still exercise your rage: With venom grinders you corrupt your meat, And then, at lingering meals, the morsels eat. Nor those, which elements we call. abide, Nor to this figure, nor to that, are tied; For this eternal world is said of old But four prolific principles to hold, Four different bodies; two to heaven ascend, And other two down to the centre tend: Fire, first, with wings expanded mounts on high, Pure, void of weight, and dwells in upper sky; Then Air, because unclogg'd in empty space, Flies after fire, and claims the second place: But weighty Water, as her nature guides, Lies on the lap of Earth, and mother Earth subsides.

All things are mixt with these, which all contain,

And into these are all resolv'd again:
Earth rarefies to dew; expanded more
The subtile dew in air begins to soar;
Spreads as she flies, and weary of her name
Extenuates still, and changes into flame;
Thus having by degrees perfection won,
Restless they soon untwist the web they spun,
And fire begins to lose her radiant hue,
Mix'd with gross air, and air descends to dew;
And dew, condensing, does her form forego,
And sinks, a heavy lump of earth, below.

Thus are their figures never at a stand,
But chang'd by Nature's innovating hand;
All things are alter'd, nothing is destroy'd,
The shifted scene for some new show employ'd
Then, to be born, is to begin to be
Some other thing we were not formerly:
And what we call to die, is not to appear,
Or be the thing that formerly we were.
Those very elements, which we partake
Alive, when dead, some other bodies make:
Translated grow, have sense, or can discourse;
But death on deathless substance has no force.
That forms are chang'd I grant, that nothing

can

Continue in the figure it began; VOL. 1.-21

By falling floods from high, to vaileys turn,
And, crumbling still, descends to level lands,
And lakes, and trembling bogs, are barren
sands:

And the parch'd desert floats in streams unknown;

Wond'ring to drink of waters not her own.

Here nature living fountains opes; and there, Seals up the wombs where living fountains [bring

were;

Or earthquakes stop their ancient course, and
Diverted streams to feed a distant spring.
So Lycus, swallow'd up, is seen no more,
But far from thence knocks out another door,
Thus Erasinus dives; and blind in earth
Runs on, and gropes his way to second birth.
Starts up in Argos' meads, and shakes his
locks

Around the fields, and fattens all the flocks.
So Mysus by another way is led,
And, grown a river, now disdains his head:
Forgets his humble birth, his name forsakes,
And the proud title of Caicus takes.
Large Amenane, impure with yellow sands,
Runs rapid often, and as often stands;
And here he threats the drunken fields to drown,
And there his dugs deny to give their liquor
down.

Anigros once did wholesome draughts afford
But now his deadly waters are abhorr'd:
Since, hurt by Hercules, as fame resounds,
The Centaur in his current wash'd his wounds.
The streams of Hypanis are sweet no more,
But, brackish, lose their taste they had before.
Antissa, Pharos, Tyre in seas were pent,
Once isles, but now increase the continent;
While the Leucadian coast, main land before,
By rushing seas is sever'd from the shore.
So Zancle to th' Italian earth was tied, [ride;
And men once walk'd where ships at anchor
Till Neptune overlook'd the narrow way,
And in disdain pour'd in the conquering sea.

Two cities that adorn'd th' Achaian ground, Buris and Helice, no more are found, But whelm'd beneath a lake, are sunk and drown'd;

And boatsmen through the crystal water show To wond'ring passengers the walls below.

Near Træzen stands a hill, expos'd in air To winter winds, of leafy shadows bare: This once was level ground: but(strange to tell) Th' included vapours, that in caverns dwell, Lab'ring with colic pangs, and close confin'd, In vain sought issue from the rumbling wind: Yet still they heav'd for vent, and heaving still Enlarg'd the concave, and shot up the hill; A breath extends a bladder, or the skins Of goats are blown to enclose the hoarded wines: The mountain yet retains a mountain's face, And gather'd rubbish heals the hollow space.

Of many wonders, which I heard or knew,
Retrenching most, I will relate but few:
What, are not springs with qualities oppos'd
Endu'd at seaons, and at seasons lost?
Thrice in a day thine, Aminon, change their
form,

Cold at high noon, at morn and evening warm:
Thine, Athaman, will kindle wood, if thrown
On the pil'd earth, and in the waning moon.
The Thracians have a stream, if any try
The taste, his harden'd bowels petrify;
Whate'er it touches it converts to stones,
And makes a marble pavement where it runs.
Grathis, and Sibari's her sister flood,
That slide through our Calabrian neighbour
wood,

With gold and amber dye the shining hair,
And thither youth resort; (for who would not be

fair?)

But stranger virtues yet in streams we find,
Some change not only bodies, but the mind :
Who has not heard of Salmacis obscene,
Whose waters into women soften men?
Of Ethiopian lakes, which turn the brain
To madness, or in heavy sleep constrain?
Clytorean streams the love of wine expel,
(Such is the virtue of th' abstemious well.)
Whether the colder nymph that rules the flood
Extinguishes, and balks the drunken god;
Or that Melampus, (so have some assur'd,)
When the mad Pratides with charms he cur'd,
And powerful herbs, both charm and simples
[last.
Into the sober spring, where still their virtues
Unlike effects Lyncestis will produce; [use,
Who drinks his waters, though with moderate
Reels as with wine, and sees with double sight:
His heels too heavy, and his head too light.
Ladon, once Pheneos, an Arcadian stream,
(Ambiguous in th' effects, as in the name,)
By day is wholesome beverage; but is thought
By night infected, and a deadly draught,

cast

Thus running rivers, and the standing lake Now of these virtues, now of those partake: Time was (and all things time and fate obey) When fast Ortygia floated on the sea:

Such were Cyanean isles, when Typhis steer'a
Betwixt their straits, and their collision fear'd;
They swam where now they sit; and, firmly
join'd,

Secure of rooting up, resist the wind.
Nor Ætna vomiting sulphureous fire
Will ever belch; for sulphur will expire,
(The veins exhausted of the liquid store ;)
Time was she cast no flames; in time will cast

no more.

For whether earth's an animal, and air
Imbibes, her lungs with coolness to repair,
And what she sucks remits; she still requires
Inlets for air, and outlets for her fires;
When tortur'd with convulsion fits she shakes,
That motion chokes the vent, till other vent
she makes:

Or when the winds in hollow caves are clos'd,
And subtile spirits find that way oppos'd,
They toss up flints in air; the flints that hide
The seeds of fire, thus toss'd in air, collide,
Kindling the sulphur, till, the fuel spent,
The cave is cool'd, and the fierce winds relent,
Or whether sulphur catching fire, feeds on
Its unctuous parts, till, all the matter gone,
The flames no more ascend; for earth supplies
The fat that feeds them; and when earth denies
That food, by length of time consum'd, the fire
Famish'd for want of fuel, must expire.

A race of men there are, as fame has told,
Who shivering suffer Hyperborean cold,
Till, nine times bathing in Minerva's lake,
Soft feathers to defend their naked sides they

take.

"T is said, the Scythian wives (believe who will) Transform themselves to birds by magic skill; Smear'd over with an oil of wondrous might, That adds new pinions to their airy flight.

But this by sure experiment we know,
That living creatures from corruption grow:
Hide in a hollow pit a slaughter'd steer,
Bees from the putrid bowels will appear;
Who like their parents haunt the fields, and
bring
[spring.
Their honey-harvest home, and hope another
The warlike steed is multiplied, we find,
To wasps and hornets of the warrior kind.
Cut from a crab his crooked claws, and hide
The rest in earth, a scorpion thence will glide,
And shoot his sting, his tail, in circles toss',
Refers the limbs his backward father lost.
And worms, that stretch on leaves their filmy
loom,

Crawl from their bags, and butterflies become.
E'en slime begets the frogs' loquacious!
Short of their feet at first, in little space
With arms and legs endu'd, long leaps they take
Rais'd on their hinder part, and swim the lake,

And waves repel: for nature gives their kind, To that intent, a length of legs behind.

The cubs of bears a living lump appear, When whelp'd, and no determin'd figure wear. Their mother licks 'em into shape, and gives As much of form, as she herself receives.

The grubs from their sexangular abode Crawl out unfinish'd, like the maggot's brood: Trunks without limbs ; till time at leisure brings The thighs they wanted, and their tardy wings. The bird who draws the car of Juno, vain Of her crown'd head, and of her starry train; And he that bears th' artillery of Jove, The strong-pounc'd eagle, and the billing dove; And all the feather'd kind, who could suppose (But that from sight, the surest sense, he knows)

They from th' included yolk, not ambient white

arose,

There are who think the marrow of a man, Which in the spine, while he was living, ran; When dead, the pith corrupted, will become A snake, and hiss within the hollow tomb.

All these receive their birth from other things; But from himself the phoenix only springs: Self-born, begotten by the parent flame In which he burn'd, another and the same: Who not by corn or herbs his life sustains, But the sweet essence of Amomum drains : And watches the rich gums Arabia bears, While yet in tender dew they drop their tears. He (his five centuries of life fulfill'd) His nest on oaken boughs begins to build, Or trembling tops of palm: and first he draws The plan with his broad bill, and crooked claws, Nature's artificers; on this the pile

Is form'd, and rises round; then with the spoil
Of Casia, Cynamon, and stems of Nard,
(For softness strew'd beneath,) his funeral bed
is rear'd:

Funeral and bridal both; and all around
The borders with corruptless myrrh are crown'd:
On this incumbent; till ethereal flame
First catches, then consumes the costly frame;
Consumes him too, as on the pile he lies;
He liv'd on odours, and in odours dies.

An infant phoenix from the former springs, His father's heir, and from his tender wings Shakes off his parent dust; his method he

pursues,

And the same lease of life on the same terms

renews:

When grown to manhood he begins his reign,
And with stiff pinions can his flight sustain,
He lightens of its load the tree that bore
His father's royal sepulchre before,
And his own cradle; this with pious care
Plac'd on his back, he cuts the buxom air

Seeks the sun's city, and his sacred church,
And decently lays down his burden in the porch.
A wonder more amazing would we find?
Th' hyæna shows it, of a double kind,
Varying the sexes in alternate years,
In one begets, and in another bears.
The thin chameleon, fed with air, receives
The colour of the thing to which he cleaves.

India, when conquer'd, on the conqu❜ring god
For planted vines the sharp-eyed lynx bestow'd,
Whose urine, shed before it touches earth,
Congeals in air, and gives to gems their birth.
So coral, soft and white in ocean's bed,
Comes harder.'d up in air, and glows with red.

All changing species should my song recite; Before I ceas'd, would change the day to night. Nations and empires flourish and decay, By turns command, and in their turns obey; Time softens hardy people, time again Hardens to war a soft, unwarlike train. Thus Troy, for ten long years, her foes with

stood,

And daily bleeding bore the expense of blood: Now for thick streets it shows an empty space, Or only fill'd with tombs of her own perish'd

race,

Herself becomes the sepulchre of what she was.
Mycene, Sparta, Thebes of mighty fame,
Are vanish'd out of substance into name,
And Dardan Rome, that just begins to rise,
On Tiber's banks, in time shall mate the skies;
Widening her bounds, and working on her way,
E'en now she meditates imperial sway:

Yet this is change, but she by changing thrives,
Like moons new born, and in her cradle strives
To fill her infant horns; an hour shall come
When the round world shall be contain'd in
Rome.

For thus old saws foretell, and Helenus Anchises' drooping son enliven'd thus, When Ilium now was in a sinking state, And he was doubtful of his future fate: O goddess-born, with thy hard fortune strive, Troy never can be lost, and thou alive. Thy passage thou shalt free through fire and sword,

[be:

And Troy in foreign lands shall be restor❜d.
In happier fields a rising town I see,
Greater than what e'er was, or is, or e'er shal
And heaven yet owes the world a race deriv'd
from thee.

Sages and chiefs, of other lineage born,
The city shall extend, extended shall adorn :
But from lulus he must draw his birth,
By whom thy Rome shall rule the conquer'a
earth:
[reign,
Whom heaven will lend mankind on earth to
And late require the precicar pledge again.

This Herenus to great Æneas told,
Which I retain, e'er since in other mould
My soul was cloth'd; and now rejoice to view
My country walls rebuilt, and Troy reviv'd

anew,

Rais'd by the fall: decreed by loss to gain; Enslav'd but to be free, and conquer'd but to reign.

'Tis time my hard-mouth'd coursers to con-
Apt to run riot, and transgress the goal: [trol,
And therefore I conclude; whatever lies
In earth, or flits in air, or fills the skies,
All suffer change, and we, that are of soul
And body mix'd, are members of the whole.
Then when our sires, or grandsires, shall for-
sake

The forms of men, and brutal figures take,
Thus hous'd, securely let their spirits rest,
Nor violate thy father in the beast,
Thy friend, thy brother, any of thy kin;
If none of these, yet there's a man within:
O spare to make a Thyestean meal,
To enclose his body, and his soul expel.
Ill customs by degrees to habits rise,
Ill habits soon become exalted vice:
What more advance can mortals make in sin
So near perfection, who with blood begin?
Deaf to the calf that lies beneath the knife,
Looks up, and from her butcher begs her life;
Deaf to the harmless kid, that, ere he dies,
All methods to procure thy mercy tries,
And imitates in vain thy children's cries.
Where will he stop, who feeds with household
bread,

Then eats the poultry which before he fed ? Let plough thy steers; that when they lose their breath,

To nature, not to thee, they may impute their death.

Let goats for food their loaded udders lend,
And sheep from winter cold thy sides defend;
But neither springes, nets, nor snares employ,
And be no more ingenious to destroy.
Free as in air, let birds on earth remain,
Nor let insidious glue their wings constrain,
Nor opening hounds the trembling stag af
fright,

Nor purple feathers intercept his flight;
Nor hooks conceal'd in baits for fish prepare,
Nor lines to heave 'em twinkling up in air.

Take not away the life you cannot give :
For all things have an equal right to live.
Kill noxious creatures, where 't is sin to save;
This only just prerogative we have:
But nourish life with vegetable food,
And shun the sacrilegious taste of blood.

These precepts by the Samian sage were
taught,

Which godlike Numa to the Sabines brought,
And thence transferr'd to Rome, by gift his own:
A willing people, and an offer'd throne.
O happy monarch, sent by heav'n to bless
A savage nation with soft arts of peace,
To teach religion, rapine to restrain,
Give laws to lust, and sacrifice ordain:
Himself a saint, a goddess was his bride,
And all the Muses o'er his acts preside.

PREFACE CONCERNING OVID'S

EPISTLES.

THE life of Ovid being already written in our language before the translation of his Metamorphoses, I will not presume so far upon myself, to think I can add any thing to Mr. Sandys his undertaking. The English reader may there be satisfied, that he flourished in the reign of Augustus Cæsar; that he was extracted from an ancient family of Roman Knights; that he was born to the inheritance of a splendid fortune; that he was designed to the study of the law, and had made considerable progress in it, before he quitted that profession, for this of Poetry, to which he was more naturally formed. The

cause of his banisnment is unknown; because he was himself unwilling further to provoke the emperor, by ascribing it to any other reason, than what was pretended by Augustus, which was, the lasciviousness of his Elegies, and his Art of Love. It is true, they are not to be excused in the severity of manners, as being able to corrupt a larger empire, if there were any, than that of Rome: yet this may be said in behalf of Ovid, that no man has ever treated the passion of love with so much delicacy of thought, and of expression, or searched into the nature of it more philosophically than he. And the em peror, who condemned him, had as little reason as another man to punish that fault with so much severity, if at least he were the author of a cen

tain Epigram, which is ascribed to him, relating to the cause of the first civil war betwixt himself and Mark Antony the triumvir, which is more fulsome than any passage I have met with in our Poot. To pass by the naked familiarity of his expressions to Horace, which are cited in that author's life, I need only mention one notorious act of his, in taking Livia to his bed, when she was not only married, but with child by her husband then living. But deeds, it seems, may be justified by arbitrary power, when words are questioned in a Poet. There is another guess of the grammarians, as far from truth as the first from reason; they will have him banished for some favours, which, they say, he received from Julia, the daughter of Augustus, whom they think he celebrates under the name of Corinna in his Elegies: but he, who will observe the verses, which are made to that mistress, may gather from the whole contexture of them, that Corinna was not a woman of the highest quality. If Julia were then married to Agrippa, why should our Poet make his petition to Isis, for her safe delivery, and afterwards condole her miscarriage; which, for aught he knew, might be by her own husband? Or, indeed, how durst he be so bold to make the least discovery of such a crime, which was no less than capital, especially committed against a person of Agrippa's rank. Or, if it were before her marriage, he would sure have been more discreet, than to have published an accident which must have been fatal to them both. But what most confirms me against this opinion is, that Ovid himself complains, that the true person of Corinna was found out by the fame of his verses to her; which if it had been Julia, he durst not have owned; and, besides, an immediate punishment must have followed. He secins himself more truly to have touched at the cause of his exile in those obscure verses;

Cur aliquid vidi, cur noxia lumina feci ? &c.

Namely, that he had either seen, or was conscious to somewhat which had procured him his disgrace. But neither am I satisfied, that this was the incest of the emperor with his own daughter; for Augustus was of a nature too vindictive, to have contented himself with so small a revenge, or so unsafe to himself, as that of simple banishment; but would certainly have secured his crimes from public notice, by the death of him who was witness to them. Neither have historians given us any sight into such an action of this emperor: nor would he (the greatest politician of his time) in all probability, have managed his crimes with so little secrecy,

as not to shun the observation of any man. It seems more probable, that Ovid was either the confidant of some other passion, or that he had stumbled by some inadvertency upon the privacies of Livia, and seen her in a bath; for the words

Sine veste Dianam

agree better with Livia, who had the fame of chastity, than with either of the Julias, who were both noted for incontinency. The first verses, which were made by him in his youth, and recited publicly, according to the custom, were, as he himself assures us, to Corinna : his banishment happened not till the age of fifty: from which it may may be deduced, with proba bility enough, that the love of Corinna did not occasion it; nay, he tells us plainly, that his offence was that of error only, not of wickedness; and in the some paper of verses also, that the cause was notoriously known at Rome, though it be left so obscure to after ages.

But to leave conjectures on a subject so uncertain, and to write some what more authentic of this Poet: that he frequented the court of Augustus, and was well received in it, is most undoubted: all his poems bear the character of a court, and appear to be written, as the French call it, cavalièrement: add to this, that the titles of many of his Elegies, and more of his letters in his banishment, are addressed to persons well known to us, even at this distance, to have been considerable in that court.

Nor was his acquaintance less with the famous Poets of his age, than with the noblemen and ladies. He tells you himself, in a particular account of his own life, that Macer, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, and many others of them, were his familiar friends, and that some of them communicated their writings to him; but that he had only seen Virgil.

If the imitation of nature be the business of a Poet, I know no author, who can justly be compared with ours, especially in the description of the passions. And, to prove this, I shall need no other judges than the generality of his readers; for all passions being inborn with us, we are almost equally judges, when we are concerned in the representation of them. Now I will appeal to any man, who has read this Poet, whether he finds not the natural emotion of the same passion in himself, which the poet describes in his feigned persons? His thoughts, which are the pictures and results of those passions, are generally such as naturally arise from those disorderly motions of our spirits. Yet, not to speak too partially in his behalf, I will confess, that the copiousness of