Lord
Macaulay
confirms, or perhaps am-
plifies, this judgment, when he says that Ovid "had
two insupportable faults: the one is, that he will al-
ways be clever; the other, that he never knows when
to have done.
plifies, this judgment, when he says that Ovid "had
two insupportable faults: the one is, that he will al-
ways be clever; the other, that he never knows when
to have done.
Ovid - 1865 - Ovid by Alfred Church
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handle.
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hathitrust.
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? 142 OVID.
Of the literary merits of the 'Letters from the
Pontus' there is little to be said. The monotony of
its subject was fatal to excellence. Ovid knew, at
least as well as any man who ever wrote, how to say
the same thing over and over again in different ways;
but even his genius could not indefinitely vary his
constant complaint that he was living among savages,
and under an inhospitable sky; his constant prayer
that he might be released from his gloomy prison, or,
at least, transferred to a more genial spot. Nor does
he vary his subject with the episodical narratives in
the telling of which he so much excelled. The story
of Orestes and Pylades is the only specimen of the
kind that occurs in the four books. Ovid puts it
into the mouth of an old native of the country, who
speaks of having himself seen the temple where the
incident happened, towering high with its vast
columns, and approached by an ascent of twelve
steps. * The versification is somewhat languid, and
occasionally careless. The poems are not exactly un-
worthy of their author, for they are probably as good
as the subject admitted. To a Latin scholar, Ovid's
verse, even when his subject is uninteresting, is al-
* The story is so well known that a very few words may
suffice for it. Orestes and Pylades land at Tauri, and, according
to the custom of the place, are seized and taken to the temple
of Diana. There one of them must be offered to the goddess.
Each is anxious to he the object of the fatal choice. While
they are contending, they find that the priestess is the sister of
Orestes, Iphigenia, who had been transported hither from the
altar at Aulis, where she had been about to suffer a similar fate.
By her help they escape.
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS. 143
? ways pleasing; an English reader would certainly
find them exceedingly tedious.
The ' Ibis' is a poem of between six and seven hun-
dred lines in length, containing almost as many impre-
cations, displaying in their variety an amazing fertility
of imagination, which are directed against a personal
enemy who had spoken ill of the poet in his banish-
ment, had persecuted his wife with his attentions, and
had endeavoured to snatch some plunder from his pro-
perty. It is modelled, as Ovid himself states, on a
poem of the same name which Callimachus wrote
against a poet who had been his pupil, and afterwards
became a rival--Apollonius Ehodius. Callimachus's
quarrel with his brother poet seems to have been a
purely literary one. Apollonius preferred the simpli-
city of the epic writers to the artificial style of his
master. The censure was bitterly felt, and resented
with a vehemence which transcends anything that
has been recorded in the history of letters. The
person whom Ovid attacked under the name of
Ibis is said to have been one Hyginus, a freedman
of the Emperor Augustus, and chief of the Palatine
Library. The principal ground for this idea is that
Hyginus was certainly at one time on terms of
intimate friendship with Ovid, and that none of
the letters written in exile are addressed to him.
Either he or some one else among the numerous
acquaintances who courted the poet in the days of
his popularity, and who deserted him in his exile,
may have been in the author's thoughts; but the
poem is scarcely serious. It has the look of being a
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? 144 OVID.
literary tour de force. Callimachus was a favourite
model with Eoman authors, and Ovid probably amused
some of the vacant hours of his exile with translating
his poem. * Every story of Greek mythology, legend,
and history is ransacked to furnish the curses which
are heaped on the head of the luckless man. "May he
fall over a staircase, as did Elpenor, the companion of
Ulysses! May he be torn to pieces by a lioness, as
was Phayllus, tyrant of Ambracia! May he be killed
by a bee-sting in the eye, as was the poet Achseus!
May he be devoured, as Glaucus was devoured, by his
horses; or leap, as did another Glaucus, into the sea!
May he drink, with trembling mouth, the same
draught that Socrates drank, all undisturbed! May
he perish caught by the hands, as was Milo in the
oak which he tried to rend! " These are a few, but,
it will probably be thought, sufficient, examples of
the 'Ibis. '
The last lines written by Ovid are probably some
which we rind in the 'Fasti' under the first of June,
praising Tiberius for the pious work which he had ac-
complished in rebuilding and dedicating various temples
at Eome. These temples were dedicated, as we learn
from Tacitus, in a. d. 17. The poet died, St Jerome
tells us, in the same year, some time before September,
from which month, in Jerome's chronicle, the years
* Allusions to Virgil's ^Eneid show that it was not wholly a
translation.
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? DEATH OF OVID. 145
are reckoned. It had been his earnest wish that the
sentence which had been so rigorously executed against
him during his life might at least be relaxed after
his death, and that his bones might be permitted to
rest in his native Italy. The desire was not granted:
he was buried at Tomi. A pretended discovery of
his tomb was made early in the sixteenth century at
Stainz, in Austria,--a place far too remote from Tomi
to make the story at all probable. If his body could
have been transported so far, why not to Italy 1 The
story appeared in another edition; the tomb and its
epitaph were the same, as was also the year of the dis-
covery, but the place was now Sawar, in Lower Hun-
gary. It may probably be put down as one of the
impostures, more or less ingenious, with which schol-
ars have often amused themselves, and of which the
period following the revival of learning--a period dur-
ing which genuine discoveries of classical remains were
frequently made--was particularly fertile. As recently
as the beginning of this century, it was announced in
some of the Parisian papers that the Eussian troops,
while engaged in building a fortress on the banks of
the Danube, had opened the poet's sepulchre, and had
named the place Ovidopol, in his honour. Unfortu-
nately it turned out that the fortress had never been
built, or even commenced; and that the local name
of Lagone Ovidouloni (which, to give a colour to the
story, had been changed into Laeus Ovidoli) owed its
origin, not to any remembrance of Ovid, but to the
practice of washing there the sheep (Lat. oois) which
A. C. S. S. , vol. ii. k
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? H6 oviD.
were exported in large numbers from Moldavia for the
consumption of Constantinople. We may dismiss as
equally apocryphal the story of the silver writing-style
of the poet, which was shown in 1540 to Isabella,
Queen of Hungary, as having been recently discovered
at Belgrade, the ancient Taurunum.
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? CHAPTEE IX.
FRAGMENTS--LOST POEMS GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
In his 'Art of Love,' Ovid tells his readers that he had
written a book on " Cosmetics," which was small in
size, but had cost him much pains. Of this book we
have remaining a fragment of about a hundred lines.
The poet begins by saying that everything is the better
for cultivation--the human face of course included.
The simple Sabine matrons of old may have been con-
tent to spend all their labour on their fields, but the
fair ones of modern Eome had different tastes. Dresses
embroidered with gold, hair richly scented and ar-
ranged in various ways, fingers adorned with rings,
and ear-rings of pearls, so heavy that two pearls were
,weight enough for an ear--such were now their tastes.
How could they be blamed, for the tastes of men were
just the same? They were quite right in trying to
please; only let them please in lawful ways. Drugs
and love-potions must be eschewed. Goodness should
be their chief charm. The days would come when it
'would be a pain to look into the mirror; but virtue
lasts through life, and the love which attaches itself
to it is not lightly lost. After this edifying preface,
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? 148 ov ID.
the poet proceeds to his subject. His instructions are
eminently practical in character,--giving the ingredi-
ents, the proper weight, and the right manner of mix-
ing them. His first recipe is for brightening the com-
plexion. Take two pounds of barley, as much of
bitter lupine, and ten eggs; dry and then grind the
substance. Add a sixth of a pound of stag's-horns;
they must be those shed by the animal for the first
time. The mixture is to be passed through a sieve.
Twelve narcissus-roots with the rind stripped off are
to be pounded in a marble mortar; add the sixth of a
pound of gum, and as much spelt, with a pound and
a half of honey. "Dress your face," says the poet,
"with this, and you will have a complexion brighter
than your mirror itself. " The prescription is some-
what complicated; but then, it must be allowed, the
object is difficult of attainment. Colour, as might be
expected, is more easily secured. To five scruples of
fennel add nine of myrrh, a handful of dry rose-leaves,
and a quantity equal in weight to the rose-leaves of
gum-ammoniacum and frankincense, and pour over it
the liquor of barley. "What other secrets of beauty
Ovid may have unfolded cannot be known, for here
the fragment breaks off.
About a hundred and thirty lines of a poem on
"Fishing" have also survived; but they are in a very
broken condition, and a passage descriptive of land
animals has somehow found its way into the midst of
them. They contain nothing practical, except it is
the advice which those acquainted with the art of
sea-fishing will recognise as sound, that the fisherman
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? FRAGMENTS AND LOST POEMS. 149
must not try his fortune in very deep water. A poem
called the ""Walnut," in which the tree complains,
among other things, of its hard lot in being pelted
with stones by passers-by, has been attributed to
Ovid. Some critics have supposed it to be a juvenile
production, but the weight of authority is against its
authenticity.
In the tragedy of " Medea" the world has suffered a
serious loss. Quintilian, a severe critic, says of it that
it seemed to him to prove how much its author could
have achieved, if he had chosen to moderate rather
than to indulge his cleverness. He mentions in the
same context the "Thyestes" of Varius, which might
challenge comparison, he says, with any of the Greek
tragedies. The two dramas are also coupled together
by Tacitus in his "Dialogue about Famous Orators,"
where he compares the popularity of dramatic and
oratorical works, just as we might couple together
"Hamlet" and "King Lear. " The " Medea" has been
altogether lost, but we may gather some idea of the
manner in which the poet treated his subject from
the seventh book of the 'Metamorphoses,' the first
half of which is devoted to the legend of the great
Colchian sorceress. "What portion of it was chosen
for the subject of the drama we do not know; but it
may be conjectured that while the "Medea" of Euri-
pides depicted the last scenes of her career, when she.
avenged the infidelity of Jason by the murder of her
children, Ovid represented her at an earlier time,
when, as the daughter of King iEetes, she loved and
helped the gallant leader of the Argonauts. Anyhow,
,-
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? 150 o vi D.
we find in the ' Metamorphoses' a very fine soliloquy,in
which the love-stricken princess holds debate between
Love and Duty :--
"Up! gird thee! for delay ?
Is death! For aye thy debtor for his life
Preserved must Jason be! And torch and rite
His honoured wife will make thee, and through all
Pelasgian cities shall their matrons hail
The Saviour of their Prince! --Ah! thus then, thus
My Sister, Brother, Sire, my natal soil,
My country's Gods, do I desert, and fly
To exile with the winds ? --my Sire is stem,
Our land is barbarous:--my Brother yet
An infant:--for my Sister, with my own
Her vows are one:--and, for the gods,--within
This bosom beats the Greatest! Little 'tis
To lose, and much to win! Fame to have saved
This flower of all Achaian youth, and sight
And knowledge of a nobler land, where tower
The cities of whose glory Fame even here
Loud rumours, and the culture and the arts
That grace the life of Heroes! More than all
I win me ^Eson's son, for whom the world
With all its treasures were but cheap exchange!
Oh bliss! to be his wife, his envied wife,
Dear to his kindred-Gods! My head will touch
The very stars with rapture! What if rocks,
As Rumour speaks, clash jostling in our track
Athwart the Seas, and fell Charybdis, foe
To ships, with flux and reflux terrible
Swallows and spouts the foam-flood 1--what if, girt
With serpents, in Sicilian ocean-caves
Devouring Scylla barks ? --The seas for me,
Clasped to the bosom of the man I love,
Will wear no terrors:--or, within his arms,
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? GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 151
If fear should rise, 'twill be, not for myself,
But only for my Husband. Husband 1--Ah!
With what fair name, Medea, dost thou cloak
Thy purposed crime? Ah! think how great the guilt
Thou darest, and, while yet thou canst, escape! "
/*
The value of Ovid's poetry has been estimated from
time to time in the course of these pages. Quintilian
says that he was too much in love with his own clever-
ness, but that he was in some respects worthy of com-
mendation.
Lord Macaulay confirms, or perhaps am-
plifies, this judgment, when he says that Ovid "had
two insupportable faults: the one is, that he will al-
ways be clever; the other, that he never knows when
to have done. " Of the 'Metamorphoses' the same
great critic wrote: "There are some very fine things
in this poem; and in ingenuity, and the art of doing
difficult things in expression and versification as if
they were the easiest in the world, Ovid is quite in-
comparable. " He thought that the best parts of the
work were the second book (specimens of which have
been given in Chapter IV. ), and the first half of
the thirteenth book, where, in the oratorical contest
between Ajax and Ulysses for the arms of Achilles,
his own tastes were doubtless satisfied. The sever-
est criticism which he passes upon the poet is when
he pronounces the 'Art of Love' to be his best poem.
If popularity is a test of merit, Ovid must be placed I
very high among the writers of antiquity. No classical
poet has been so widely and so continuously read. He
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? 152 OVID.
seems not to have been forgotten even when learning
and the taste for literature were at their lowest ebb.
Among the stories which attest the favour in which
he was held may be quoted the words which are
reported to have been used by Alphonso, surnamed
the Magnanimous. That eccentric prince, who may
be called the Pyrrhus of modern history, while prose-
cuting his conquests in Italy, came to the town of
Sulmo, which has been mentioned as Ovid's birth-
place. "Willingly would I yield this region, which
is no small or contemptible part of the kingdom of
Naples, could it have been granted to my times to
possess this poet. Even dead I hold him to be of
more account than the possession of the whole of
Apulia. " The bibliography of Ovid, as a writer in
the 'Nouvelle Biographie TJniverselle' remarks, is im-
mense. Two folio volumes of the 'New Catalogue of
the British Museum' are devoted to an enumeration
of editions and translations of the whole or various
parts of his works.
For the immorality of much of his writings no de-
fence can be made. Yet, if it is anything in favour
of a culprit that he is not alone in his guilt, it may be
urged in arrest of judgment that one of the greatest
of English poets translated with much approval of
his own generation the very worst of these writings,--
and not only translated them, but contrived to make
them more offensive in their new dress than they are
in the old.
It was not altogether a bad character which has
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? GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 153
been thus summed up by Lord Macaulay: "He seems
to have been a very good fellow; rather too fond of
women; a flatterer and a coward: but kind and
generous; and free from envy, though a man of
letters, and though sufficiently vain of his own per-
formances. "
END OF OVID.
FEINTED B? WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
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? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-26 11:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/njp. 32101074172253 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-26 11:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/njp. 32101074172253 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? WH? B
? Hi
lal
? ? ? ?
I
1
,?
?
mi
Hi
^'^
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-26 11:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/njp. 32101074172253 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust.
? 142 OVID.
Of the literary merits of the 'Letters from the
Pontus' there is little to be said. The monotony of
its subject was fatal to excellence. Ovid knew, at
least as well as any man who ever wrote, how to say
the same thing over and over again in different ways;
but even his genius could not indefinitely vary his
constant complaint that he was living among savages,
and under an inhospitable sky; his constant prayer
that he might be released from his gloomy prison, or,
at least, transferred to a more genial spot. Nor does
he vary his subject with the episodical narratives in
the telling of which he so much excelled. The story
of Orestes and Pylades is the only specimen of the
kind that occurs in the four books. Ovid puts it
into the mouth of an old native of the country, who
speaks of having himself seen the temple where the
incident happened, towering high with its vast
columns, and approached by an ascent of twelve
steps. * The versification is somewhat languid, and
occasionally careless. The poems are not exactly un-
worthy of their author, for they are probably as good
as the subject admitted. To a Latin scholar, Ovid's
verse, even when his subject is uninteresting, is al-
* The story is so well known that a very few words may
suffice for it. Orestes and Pylades land at Tauri, and, according
to the custom of the place, are seized and taken to the temple
of Diana. There one of them must be offered to the goddess.
Each is anxious to he the object of the fatal choice. While
they are contending, they find that the priestess is the sister of
Orestes, Iphigenia, who had been transported hither from the
altar at Aulis, where she had been about to suffer a similar fate.
By her help they escape.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-26 11:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/njp. 32101074172253 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS. 143
? ways pleasing; an English reader would certainly
find them exceedingly tedious.
The ' Ibis' is a poem of between six and seven hun-
dred lines in length, containing almost as many impre-
cations, displaying in their variety an amazing fertility
of imagination, which are directed against a personal
enemy who had spoken ill of the poet in his banish-
ment, had persecuted his wife with his attentions, and
had endeavoured to snatch some plunder from his pro-
perty. It is modelled, as Ovid himself states, on a
poem of the same name which Callimachus wrote
against a poet who had been his pupil, and afterwards
became a rival--Apollonius Ehodius. Callimachus's
quarrel with his brother poet seems to have been a
purely literary one. Apollonius preferred the simpli-
city of the epic writers to the artificial style of his
master. The censure was bitterly felt, and resented
with a vehemence which transcends anything that
has been recorded in the history of letters. The
person whom Ovid attacked under the name of
Ibis is said to have been one Hyginus, a freedman
of the Emperor Augustus, and chief of the Palatine
Library. The principal ground for this idea is that
Hyginus was certainly at one time on terms of
intimate friendship with Ovid, and that none of
the letters written in exile are addressed to him.
Either he or some one else among the numerous
acquaintances who courted the poet in the days of
his popularity, and who deserted him in his exile,
may have been in the author's thoughts; but the
poem is scarcely serious. It has the look of being a
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-26 11:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/njp. 32101074172253 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 144 OVID.
literary tour de force. Callimachus was a favourite
model with Eoman authors, and Ovid probably amused
some of the vacant hours of his exile with translating
his poem. * Every story of Greek mythology, legend,
and history is ransacked to furnish the curses which
are heaped on the head of the luckless man. "May he
fall over a staircase, as did Elpenor, the companion of
Ulysses! May he be torn to pieces by a lioness, as
was Phayllus, tyrant of Ambracia! May he be killed
by a bee-sting in the eye, as was the poet Achseus!
May he be devoured, as Glaucus was devoured, by his
horses; or leap, as did another Glaucus, into the sea!
May he drink, with trembling mouth, the same
draught that Socrates drank, all undisturbed! May
he perish caught by the hands, as was Milo in the
oak which he tried to rend! " These are a few, but,
it will probably be thought, sufficient, examples of
the 'Ibis. '
The last lines written by Ovid are probably some
which we rind in the 'Fasti' under the first of June,
praising Tiberius for the pious work which he had ac-
complished in rebuilding and dedicating various temples
at Eome. These temples were dedicated, as we learn
from Tacitus, in a. d. 17. The poet died, St Jerome
tells us, in the same year, some time before September,
from which month, in Jerome's chronicle, the years
* Allusions to Virgil's ^Eneid show that it was not wholly a
translation.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-26 11:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/njp. 32101074172253 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? DEATH OF OVID. 145
are reckoned. It had been his earnest wish that the
sentence which had been so rigorously executed against
him during his life might at least be relaxed after
his death, and that his bones might be permitted to
rest in his native Italy. The desire was not granted:
he was buried at Tomi. A pretended discovery of
his tomb was made early in the sixteenth century at
Stainz, in Austria,--a place far too remote from Tomi
to make the story at all probable. If his body could
have been transported so far, why not to Italy 1 The
story appeared in another edition; the tomb and its
epitaph were the same, as was also the year of the dis-
covery, but the place was now Sawar, in Lower Hun-
gary. It may probably be put down as one of the
impostures, more or less ingenious, with which schol-
ars have often amused themselves, and of which the
period following the revival of learning--a period dur-
ing which genuine discoveries of classical remains were
frequently made--was particularly fertile. As recently
as the beginning of this century, it was announced in
some of the Parisian papers that the Eussian troops,
while engaged in building a fortress on the banks of
the Danube, had opened the poet's sepulchre, and had
named the place Ovidopol, in his honour. Unfortu-
nately it turned out that the fortress had never been
built, or even commenced; and that the local name
of Lagone Ovidouloni (which, to give a colour to the
story, had been changed into Laeus Ovidoli) owed its
origin, not to any remembrance of Ovid, but to the
practice of washing there the sheep (Lat. oois) which
A. C. S. S. , vol. ii. k
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-26 11:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/njp. 32101074172253 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? H6 oviD.
were exported in large numbers from Moldavia for the
consumption of Constantinople. We may dismiss as
equally apocryphal the story of the silver writing-style
of the poet, which was shown in 1540 to Isabella,
Queen of Hungary, as having been recently discovered
at Belgrade, the ancient Taurunum.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-26 11:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/njp. 32101074172253 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? CHAPTEE IX.
FRAGMENTS--LOST POEMS GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
In his 'Art of Love,' Ovid tells his readers that he had
written a book on " Cosmetics," which was small in
size, but had cost him much pains. Of this book we
have remaining a fragment of about a hundred lines.
The poet begins by saying that everything is the better
for cultivation--the human face of course included.
The simple Sabine matrons of old may have been con-
tent to spend all their labour on their fields, but the
fair ones of modern Eome had different tastes. Dresses
embroidered with gold, hair richly scented and ar-
ranged in various ways, fingers adorned with rings,
and ear-rings of pearls, so heavy that two pearls were
,weight enough for an ear--such were now their tastes.
How could they be blamed, for the tastes of men were
just the same? They were quite right in trying to
please; only let them please in lawful ways. Drugs
and love-potions must be eschewed. Goodness should
be their chief charm. The days would come when it
'would be a pain to look into the mirror; but virtue
lasts through life, and the love which attaches itself
to it is not lightly lost. After this edifying preface,
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? 148 ov ID.
the poet proceeds to his subject. His instructions are
eminently practical in character,--giving the ingredi-
ents, the proper weight, and the right manner of mix-
ing them. His first recipe is for brightening the com-
plexion. Take two pounds of barley, as much of
bitter lupine, and ten eggs; dry and then grind the
substance. Add a sixth of a pound of stag's-horns;
they must be those shed by the animal for the first
time. The mixture is to be passed through a sieve.
Twelve narcissus-roots with the rind stripped off are
to be pounded in a marble mortar; add the sixth of a
pound of gum, and as much spelt, with a pound and
a half of honey. "Dress your face," says the poet,
"with this, and you will have a complexion brighter
than your mirror itself. " The prescription is some-
what complicated; but then, it must be allowed, the
object is difficult of attainment. Colour, as might be
expected, is more easily secured. To five scruples of
fennel add nine of myrrh, a handful of dry rose-leaves,
and a quantity equal in weight to the rose-leaves of
gum-ammoniacum and frankincense, and pour over it
the liquor of barley. "What other secrets of beauty
Ovid may have unfolded cannot be known, for here
the fragment breaks off.
About a hundred and thirty lines of a poem on
"Fishing" have also survived; but they are in a very
broken condition, and a passage descriptive of land
animals has somehow found its way into the midst of
them. They contain nothing practical, except it is
the advice which those acquainted with the art of
sea-fishing will recognise as sound, that the fisherman
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? FRAGMENTS AND LOST POEMS. 149
must not try his fortune in very deep water. A poem
called the ""Walnut," in which the tree complains,
among other things, of its hard lot in being pelted
with stones by passers-by, has been attributed to
Ovid. Some critics have supposed it to be a juvenile
production, but the weight of authority is against its
authenticity.
In the tragedy of " Medea" the world has suffered a
serious loss. Quintilian, a severe critic, says of it that
it seemed to him to prove how much its author could
have achieved, if he had chosen to moderate rather
than to indulge his cleverness. He mentions in the
same context the "Thyestes" of Varius, which might
challenge comparison, he says, with any of the Greek
tragedies. The two dramas are also coupled together
by Tacitus in his "Dialogue about Famous Orators,"
where he compares the popularity of dramatic and
oratorical works, just as we might couple together
"Hamlet" and "King Lear. " The " Medea" has been
altogether lost, but we may gather some idea of the
manner in which the poet treated his subject from
the seventh book of the 'Metamorphoses,' the first
half of which is devoted to the legend of the great
Colchian sorceress. "What portion of it was chosen
for the subject of the drama we do not know; but it
may be conjectured that while the "Medea" of Euri-
pides depicted the last scenes of her career, when she.
avenged the infidelity of Jason by the murder of her
children, Ovid represented her at an earlier time,
when, as the daughter of King iEetes, she loved and
helped the gallant leader of the Argonauts. Anyhow,
,-
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? 150 o vi D.
we find in the ' Metamorphoses' a very fine soliloquy,in
which the love-stricken princess holds debate between
Love and Duty :--
"Up! gird thee! for delay ?
Is death! For aye thy debtor for his life
Preserved must Jason be! And torch and rite
His honoured wife will make thee, and through all
Pelasgian cities shall their matrons hail
The Saviour of their Prince! --Ah! thus then, thus
My Sister, Brother, Sire, my natal soil,
My country's Gods, do I desert, and fly
To exile with the winds ? --my Sire is stem,
Our land is barbarous:--my Brother yet
An infant:--for my Sister, with my own
Her vows are one:--and, for the gods,--within
This bosom beats the Greatest! Little 'tis
To lose, and much to win! Fame to have saved
This flower of all Achaian youth, and sight
And knowledge of a nobler land, where tower
The cities of whose glory Fame even here
Loud rumours, and the culture and the arts
That grace the life of Heroes! More than all
I win me ^Eson's son, for whom the world
With all its treasures were but cheap exchange!
Oh bliss! to be his wife, his envied wife,
Dear to his kindred-Gods! My head will touch
The very stars with rapture! What if rocks,
As Rumour speaks, clash jostling in our track
Athwart the Seas, and fell Charybdis, foe
To ships, with flux and reflux terrible
Swallows and spouts the foam-flood 1--what if, girt
With serpents, in Sicilian ocean-caves
Devouring Scylla barks ? --The seas for me,
Clasped to the bosom of the man I love,
Will wear no terrors:--or, within his arms,
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? GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 151
If fear should rise, 'twill be, not for myself,
But only for my Husband. Husband 1--Ah!
With what fair name, Medea, dost thou cloak
Thy purposed crime? Ah! think how great the guilt
Thou darest, and, while yet thou canst, escape! "
/*
The value of Ovid's poetry has been estimated from
time to time in the course of these pages. Quintilian
says that he was too much in love with his own clever-
ness, but that he was in some respects worthy of com-
mendation.
Lord Macaulay confirms, or perhaps am-
plifies, this judgment, when he says that Ovid "had
two insupportable faults: the one is, that he will al-
ways be clever; the other, that he never knows when
to have done. " Of the 'Metamorphoses' the same
great critic wrote: "There are some very fine things
in this poem; and in ingenuity, and the art of doing
difficult things in expression and versification as if
they were the easiest in the world, Ovid is quite in-
comparable. " He thought that the best parts of the
work were the second book (specimens of which have
been given in Chapter IV. ), and the first half of
the thirteenth book, where, in the oratorical contest
between Ajax and Ulysses for the arms of Achilles,
his own tastes were doubtless satisfied. The sever-
est criticism which he passes upon the poet is when
he pronounces the 'Art of Love' to be his best poem.
If popularity is a test of merit, Ovid must be placed I
very high among the writers of antiquity. No classical
poet has been so widely and so continuously read. He
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? 152 OVID.
seems not to have been forgotten even when learning
and the taste for literature were at their lowest ebb.
Among the stories which attest the favour in which
he was held may be quoted the words which are
reported to have been used by Alphonso, surnamed
the Magnanimous. That eccentric prince, who may
be called the Pyrrhus of modern history, while prose-
cuting his conquests in Italy, came to the town of
Sulmo, which has been mentioned as Ovid's birth-
place. "Willingly would I yield this region, which
is no small or contemptible part of the kingdom of
Naples, could it have been granted to my times to
possess this poet. Even dead I hold him to be of
more account than the possession of the whole of
Apulia. " The bibliography of Ovid, as a writer in
the 'Nouvelle Biographie TJniverselle' remarks, is im-
mense. Two folio volumes of the 'New Catalogue of
the British Museum' are devoted to an enumeration
of editions and translations of the whole or various
parts of his works.
For the immorality of much of his writings no de-
fence can be made. Yet, if it is anything in favour
of a culprit that he is not alone in his guilt, it may be
urged in arrest of judgment that one of the greatest
of English poets translated with much approval of
his own generation the very worst of these writings,--
and not only translated them, but contrived to make
them more offensive in their new dress than they are
in the old.
It was not altogether a bad character which has
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? GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 153
been thus summed up by Lord Macaulay: "He seems
to have been a very good fellow; rather too fond of
women; a flatterer and a coward: but kind and
generous; and free from envy, though a man of
letters, and though sufficiently vain of his own per-
formances. "
END OF OVID.
FEINTED B? WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
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