Part 12

funeral flames Divided, like the souls they carry.

The rival brothers ultimately engaged in single combat, and both fell. The body of Polynices was placed by mistake upon the funeral pile of Eteocles, and the flames rose upwards in diverging currents.]

When Dirce blushed, being stained with Grecian blood.]

Which shall o'er long posterity prevail.

The more forcible phrase which he substituted for "long posterity," was from Dryden's Virg. Æn. iii. 132:

And children's children shall the crown sustain.]

Put on that diadem besmeared with gore Which from my father's head these fingers tore.]

Broke ev'ry bond of nature and of truth]

And from Strymonius hewed his better hand.]

The first edition had a feeble prosaic line in place of the image which Warton admired:

Headlong from thence the fury urged her flight, And at the Theban palace did alight.]

jurisque secundi Ambitus impatiens, et summo dulcius unum Stare loco,--

than by Pope's couplet, which most judiciously, by reversing the two clauses, gains the power of fusing them into connection.--DE QUINCEY.]

Not all those realms could for such crimes suffice.

Pope might have done more to improve this prosaic couplet.]

How wast thou lost In thine own joys, proud tyrant then, when all About thee were thy slaves.]

De Quincey was mistaken in his inference that Pope was unable to understand the passage, for he had the assistance of the translation of Stephens, which gives the meaning correctly:

Anon He sets him down on his bespangled throne. The rest stand and expect: not one presumed To sit till leave was beckoned.]

By "our author" Warton meant Statius, and the expression, he criticised as hyberbolical was the "eluded rage of Jove,"--an exaggeration for which Pope alone was responsible.]

So may thy silver streams beneath the tide, Unmixed with briny seas, securely glide.]

This were such a day He'd spend an age to see 't.]

The silent world does view Her airy chariot pearled with drops of dew.]

And nodding through the air brings down in haste A sweet forgetfulness of labour passed.]

He copied Dryden's Virg. Æn. iv. 638:

As when the winds their airy quarrel try.

He was indebted to a second couplet in the same translation, Æn. ii. 565:

Thus, when the rival winds their quarrel try, Contending for the kingdom of the sky.]

The prince with wonder did the waste behold, While from torn rocks the massy fragments rolled.]