And linger with her shepherd love, until
The hooves of the steeds that bear the car of day,

Struck silver light in the east, and then she waned away!"
It was on Latmos, not Ida, that Endymion shepherded his flocks; but

that is of no moment, except to schoolmasters. There are other
stanzas of Reynolds worthy of Keats; for example, this on the Fairy

Queen:
"Her bodice was a pretty sight to see;

Ye who would know its colour,--be a thief
Of the rose's muffled bud from off the tree;

And for your knowledge, strip it leaf by leaf
Spite of your own remorse or Flora's grief,

Till ye have come unto its heart's pale hue;
The last, last leaf, which is the queen,--the chief

Of beautiful dim blooms: ye shall not rue,
At sight of that sweet leaf the mischief which ye do."

One does not know when to leave off gathering buds in the "Garden of
Florence." Even after Shakespeare, and after Keats, this passage on

wild flowers has its own charm:
"We gathered wood flowers,--some blue as the vein

O'er Hero's eyelid stealing, and some as white,
In the clustering grass, as rich Europa's hand

Nested amid the curls on Jupiter's forehead,
What time he snatched her through the startled waves; -

Some poppies, too, such as in Enna's meadows
Forsook their own green homes and parent stalks,

To kiss the fingers of Proserpina:
And some were small as fairies' eyes, and bright

As lovers' tears!"
I wish I had room for three or four sonnets, the Robin Hood sonnets

to Keats, and another on a picture of a lady. Excuse the length of
this letter, and read this:

"Sorrow hath made thine eyes more dark and keen,
And set a whiter hue upon thy cheeks, -

And round thy pressed lips drawn anguish-streaks,
And made thy forehead fearfully serene.

Even in thy steady hair her work is seen,
For its still parted darkness--till it breaks

In heavy curls upon thy shoulders--speaks
Like the stern wave, how hard the storm hath been!

"So looked that hapless lady of the South,
Sweet Isabella! at that dreary part

Of all the passion'd hours of her youth;
When her green Basil pot by brother's art

Was stolen away; so look'd her pained mouth
In the mute patience of a breaking heart!"

There let us leave him, the gay rhymer of prize-fighters and eminent
persons--let us leave him in a serious hour, and with a memory of

Keats. {5}
ON VIRGIL

To Lady Violet Lebas.
Dear Lady Violet,--Who can admire too much your undefeated

resolution to admire only the right things? I wish I had this
respect for authority! But let me confess that I have always

admired the things which nature made me prefer, and that I have no
power of accommodating my taste to the verdict of the critical. If

I do not like an author, I leave him alone, however great his
reputation. Thus I do not care for Mr. Gibbon, except in his

Autobiography, nor for the elegant plays of M. Racine, nor very much
for some of Wordsworth, though his genius is undeniable, nor

excessively for the late Prof. Amiel. Why should we force ourselves
into an affection for them, any more than into a relish for olives

or claret, both of which excellent creatures I have the misfortune
to dislike? No spectacle annoys me more than the sight of people

who ask if it is "right" to take pleasure in this or that work of
art. Their loves and hatreds will never be genuine, natural,

spontaneous.
You say that it is "right" to like Virgil, and yet you admit that

you admire the Mantuan, as the Scotch editor joked, "wi'
deeficulty." I, too, must admit that my liking for much of Virgil's

poetry is not enthusiastic, not like the admiration expressed, for
example, by Mr. Frederic Myers, in whose "Classical Essays" you will

find all that the advocates of the Latin singer can say for him.
These heights I cannot reach, any more than I can equal that

eloquence. Yet must Virgil always appear to us one of the most
beautiful and moving figures in the whole of literature.

How sweet must have been that personality which can still win our
affections, across eighteen hundred years of change, and through the

mists of commentaries, and school-books, and traditions! Does it
touch thee at all, oh gentle spirit and serene, that we, who never

knew thee, love thee yet, and revere thee as a saint of heathendom?
Have the dead any delight in the religion they inspire?

Id cinerem aut Manes credis curare sepultos?
I half fancy I can trace the origin of this personal affection for

Virgil, which survives in me despite the lack of a very strong love
of parts of his poems. When I was at school we met every morning

for prayer, in a large circular hall, round which, on pedestals,
were set copies of the portrait busts of great ancient writers.

Among these was "the Ionian father of the rest," our father Homer,
with a winning and venerablemajesty. But the bust of Virgil was, I

think, of white marble, not a cast (so, at least, I remember it),
and was of a singularyouthfulpurity and beauty, sharing my

affections with a copy of the exquisite Psyche of Naples. It showed
us that Virgil who was called "The Maiden" as Milton was named "The

Lady of Christ's." I don't know the archeology of it, perhaps it
was a mere work of modern fancy, but the charm of this image, beheld

daily, overcame even the tedium of short scraps of the "AEneid"
daily parsed, not without stripes and anguish. So I retain a

sentiment for Virgil, though I well perceive the many drawbacks of
his poetry.

It is not always poetry at first hand; it is often imitative, like
all Latin poetry, of the Greek songs that sounded at the awakening

of the world. This is more tolerable when Theocritus is the model,
as in the "Eclogues," and less obvious in the "Georgics," when the

poet is carried away into naturalness by the passion for his native
land, by the longing for peace after cruel wars, by the joy of a

country life. Virgil had that love of rivers which, I think, a poet
is rarely without; and it did not need Greece to teach him to sing

of the fields:
Propter aquam, tardis ingens ubi flexibus

Mincius et tenera praetexit arundine ripas.
"By the water-side, where mighty Mincius wanders, with links and

loops, and fringes all the banks with the tender reed." Not the
Muses of Greece, but his own Casmenae, song-maidens of Italy, have

inspired him here, and his music is blown through a reed of the
Mincius. In many such places he shows a temper with which we of

England, in our late age, may closely sympathize.
Do you remember that mediaeval story of the building of Parthenope,

how it was based, by the Magician Virgilius, on an egg, and how the
city shakes when the frail foundation chances to be stirred? This

too vast empire of ours is as frail in its foundation, and trembles
at a word. So it was with the Empire of Rome in Virgil's time:

civic revolution muttering within it, like the subterranean thunder,
and the forces of destructiongathering without. In Virgil, as in

Horace, you constantly note their anxiety, their apprehension for
the tottering fabric of the Roman state. This it was, I think, and

not the contemplation of human fortunes alone, that lent Virgil his
melancholy. From these fears he looks for a shelter in the sylvan

shades; he envies the ideal past of the golden world.
Aureus hanc vitam in terris Saturnus agebat!

"Oh, for the fields! Oh, for Spercheius and Taygetus, where wander
the Lacaenian maids! Oh, that one would carry me to the cool

valleys of Haemus, and cover me with the wide shadow of the boughs!
Happy was he who came to know the causes of things, who set his foot

on fear and on inexorable Fate, and far below him heard the roaring