"A MORTAL MAY NOT LEAN ON HEAVEN WHEN IT AVERTS ITS MIEN."-CONINGTON'S VIRGIL.

66 CAN VOWS, CAN SACRIFICE ALLAY-(VIRGIL)

THE LAST DAYS OF TROY.

in spite of prudent counsel, hastened to seize it as a memorial of victory,
and conveyed it within the city. At night, its armed occupants broke
forth, surprised the Trojan guards, and threw open the gates to the Greek
army.]

B

UT ghastlier portents lay behind,

Our unprophetic souls to blind.
Laocoon, named as Neptune's priest,
Was offering up the victim beast,
When lo! from Tenedos-I quail,
E'en now, at telling of the tale-

Two monstrous serpents stem the tide,
And shoreward through the stillness glide.
Amid the waves they rear their breasts,
And toss on high their sanguine crests:
The hind part coils along the deep,

And undulates with sinuous sweep.
The lashed spray echoes: now they reach
The inland belted by the beach,
And rolling bloodshot eyes of fire,
Dart their forked tongues, and hiss for ire.
We fly distraught: unswerving they
Toward Laocoon hold their way;

First round his two young sons they wreathe,
And grind their limbs with savage teeth;
Then, as with arms he comes to aid,
The wretched father they invade,
And twine in giant folds; twice round
His stalwart waist their spires are wound,
Twice round his neck, while over all
Their heads and crests tower high and tall.
He strains his strength their knots to tear,
While gore and slime his fillets smear,
And to the unregardful skies

Sends up his agonizing cries:

A wounded bull such moaning makes

A FRANTIC LOVER'S SMART?"-CONINGTON'S VIRGIL.

"THOSE STRANGE SHAPES THAT OCEAN HIDES BENEATH THE SMOOTHNESS OF HIS TIDES."-IBID.

139

"MANY A LENGTH OF AGES PAST, THE INHERENT TAINT IS CLEANSED AT LAST,-(CONINGTON'S VIRGIL)

66 CURST LOVE! WHAT LENGTHS OF TYRANT SCORN-(CONINGTON'S VIRGIL)

When from his neck the axe he shakes,
Ill-aimed, and from the altar breaks.
The twin-destroyers take their flight
To Pallas' temple on the height;

There by the goddess' feet concealed
They lie, and nestle 'neath her shield.
At once through Ilium's hapless sons
A shock of feverous horror runs:

All in Laocoon's death-pangs read
The just requital of his deed,

Who dared to harm with impious stroke
Those ribs of consecrated oak.

"The image to its fane!" they cry:
"To soothe the offended deity."

Each in the labour claims his share;
The walls are breached, the town laid bare;
Wheels 'neath its feet are fixed to glide,
And round its neck stout ropes are tied:

So climbs our wall that shape of doom,
With battle quickening in its womb,
While youths and maidens sing glad songs,
And joy to touch the harness-thongs.
It comes, and, glancing terror down,
Sweeps through the bosom of the town.
O Ilium, city of my love!
O warlike home of powers above!
Four times 'twas on the threshold stayed:
Four times the armour clashed and brayed.
Yet on we press with passion blind,
All forethought blotted from our mind,
Till the dread monster we install
Within the temple's tower-built wall.
E'en then Cassandra's prescient voice
Forewarned us of our fatal choice;

WREAK'ST THOU ON THOSE OF WOMEN BORN!"-CONINGTON'S VIRGIL.

MIDNIGHT REMAINS BUT ETHER BRIGHT, AND THE QUINTESSENCE OF HEAVENLY LIGHT."-CONINGTON'S VIRGIL.

AND PALE DISEASES CLUSTER THERE, AND PLEASURELESS DECAY, FOUL PENURY, AND FEARS THAT KILL,

AND HUNGER, COUNSELLOR OF ILL, A GHASTLY PRESENCE THEY."-PROFESSOR CONINGTON'S VIRGIL

["Till the dread monster we install."]
From the Vatican Manuscript.

That prescient voice, which Heaven decreed
No son of Troy should hear and heed.
We, careless souls, the city through,
With festal boughs the fanes bestrew,
And in such revelry employ

The last, last day should shine on Troy.

[From the "Aeneid," book ii. For the sake of comparison we quote a
few lines from Dryden's translation of the above passage:-

"When, dreadful to behold, from sea we spyed
Two serpents ranked abreast the seas divide,
And smoothly sweep along the swelling tide.
Their flaming crests above the waves they show,
Their bellies seem to burn the seas below:
Their speckled tails advance to steer their course,
And, on the sounding shore, the flying billows force.
And now the strand, and now the plain they held,
Their ardent eyes with bloody streaks were filled:
Their nimble tongues they brandished as they came,
And licked their hissing jaws that spattered flame.

WILD SORROW AND AVENGING CARE;

HERE SEES HE THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD

We fled amazed; their destined way they take,
And to Laocoon and his children make:

And first around the tender boys they wind,

Then with their sharpened fangs their limbs and bodies grind.
Twice round his waist their winding volumes rolled,

And twice about his gasping throat they fold.
The priest, thus doubly choked, their crests divide,
And towering o'er his head, in triumph ride."

PRIESTS, WHO WHILE EARTHLY LIFE REMAINED, preserved THAT LIFE UNSOILED, UNSTAINED;-(CONINGTON'S VIRGIL)

BLEST BARDS, TRANSPARENT SOULS AND CLEAR, WHOSE SONG WAS WORTHY PHOEBUS' EAR."-CONINGTON'S VIRGIL.

["Laocoon's torture dignifying pain."]

The legend of Laocoon is the subject of one of the finest specimens of an-
cient sculpture extant, discovered at Rome in 1506, and now preserved in
the gallery of the Vatican palace. It is thus described by Byron :-

Go see

Laocoon's torture dignifying pain

A father's love and mortal's agony

With an immortal's patience blending. Vain
The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain

WHO, FIGHTING FOR THEIR COUNTRY, BLED;

BUT LIVELY GALES AND GENTLY CLOUDED SKIES DISPERSE THE SAD REFLECTIONS,

THUS IN THE CALMS OF LIFE WE ONLY SEE

GEORGE CRABBE.

And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,
The old man's clench; the long envenomed chain
Rivets the living links,-the enormous asp
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.'
Childe Harold, canto iv., stanza 160.]

143

AND BUSY THOUGHTS AND LITTLE CARES AVAIL TO EASE THE MIND."-GEORGE CRABBE.

George Crabbe.

[CRABBE, says Lord Jeffrey, is the greatest mannerist of all our modern
English poets; and it is rather unfortunate that the most prominent fea-
tures of his mannerism are not the most pleasing. The homely, quaint,
and prosaic style-the flat and often broken and jingling versification-the
eternal full-lengths of low and worthless characters, with their accustomed
garnishings of sly jokes and familiar moralizing,— -are all on the surface of
his writings, and are almost unavoidably the things by which we are first
reminded of him when we take up any of his new productions.

These would seem to be grave defects, but, in the critic's opinion, they
are more than counterbalanced by unusual excellences, not less peculiar or
less strongly marked than the blemishes with which they are contrasted.
Namely, an unrivalled and almost magical power of observation, resulting
in descriptions so true to nature as to strike us rather as transcripts than
imitations; an anatomy of character and feeling not less exquisite and
searching; an occasional touch of matchless tenderness; and a deep and
dreadful pathos, interspersed by fits, and strangely interwoven with the most
minute and humble of his details. Add to all this the sure and profound
sagacity of the remarks with which he every now and then startles us in the
midst of very unambitious discussions; and the weight and terseness of the
maxims which he drops, like oracular responses, on occasions that give no
promise of such a revelation; and last, though not least, that sweet and sel-
dom sounded chord of lyrical inspiration, the lightest touch of which instantly
charms away all harshness from his numbers, and lowness from his themes.
He was born at Aldborough, in Suffolk, December 24, 1754, of which
parish he afterwards became curate, and remained there until he found a
patron in the Duke of Rutland. In 1814 the duke gave him the living of
Trowbridge, in Wiltshire, where, after a long and happy career, he died
on the 3rd of February 1832. His life has been written by his son.
poems appeared in the following order: "The Library," 1781; "The Vil-
lage," 1783; "The Parish Register," 1807; "The Borough," 1810; "Tales,"
1812; and "Tales of the Hall," 1819.

"Truth sometimes will lend her noblest fires,
And decorate the verse herself inspires:
This fact in Virtue's name let Crabbe attest;
Though Nature's sternest painter, yet the best."

His

LORD BYRON.]

A STEADIER IMAGE OF OUR MISERY;- -(CRABBE)