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The general idea, however, has been fondly adopted by the finest writers in Europe. The PURPLE of the ancients is not known to us. What idea, therefore, have the moderns affixed to it? Addison, in his Vision of the Temple of Fame, describes the country as “being covered with a kind of PURPLE LIGHT.” Gray’s beautiful line is well known:–

The bloom of young desire and purple light of love.

And Tasso, in describing his hero Godfrey, says, Heaven

Gli empie d’onor la faccia, e vi riduce
Di Giovinezza il bel purpureo lume.

Both Gray and Tasso copied Virgil, where Venus gives to her son AEneas–

—-Lumenque Juventae
Purpureum.

Dryden has omitted the purple light in his version, nor is it given by Pitt; but Dryden expresses the general idea by

—- With hands divine,
Had formed his curling locks and made his temples shine,
And given his rolling eys a sparkling grace.

It is probable that Milton has given us his idea of what was meant by this purple light, when applied to the human countenance, in the felicitous expression of

CELESTIAL ROSY-RED.

Gray appears to me to be indebted to Milton for a hint for the opening of his Elegy: as in the first line he had Dante and Milton in his mind, he perhaps might also in the following passage have recollected a congenial one in Comus, which he altered. Milton, describing the evening, marks it out by

—- What time the laboured ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came,
And the swinkt hedger at his supper sat.

Gray has

The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way.

Warton has made an observation on this passage in Comus; and observes further that it is a classical circumstance, but not a natural one, in an English landscape, for our ploughmen quit their work at noon. I think, therefore, the imitation is still more evident; and as Warton observes, both Gray and Milton copied here from books, and not from life.

There are three great poets who have given us a similar incident.

Dryden introduces the highly finished picture of the hare in his Annus Mirabilis:–

Stanza 131.
So I have seen some fearful hare maintain
A course, till tired before the dog she lay,
Who stretched behind her, pants upon the plain,
Past power to kill, as she to get away.

132.
With his loll’d tongue he faintly licks his prey;
His warm breath blows her flix up as she lies:
She trembling creeps upon the ground away
And looks back to him with beseeching eyes.

Thomson paints the stag in a similar situation:–

—-Fainting breathless toil
Sick seizes on his heart–he stands at bay:
The big round tears run down his dappled face,
He groans in anguish.
Autumn, v. 451.

Shakspeare exhibits the same object:–

The wretched animal heaved forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase.

Of these three pictures the beseeching eyes of Dryden perhaps is more pathetic than the big round tears, certainly borrowed by Thomson from Shakspeare, because the former expression has more passion, and is therefore more poetical. The sixth line in Dryden is perhaps exquisite for its imitative harmony, and with peculiar felicity paints the action itself. Thomson adroitly drops the innocent nose, of which one word seems to have lost its original signification, and the other offends now by its familiarity. The dappled face is a term more picturesque, more appropriate, and more poetically expressed.

[Footnote 1:
The old poet is the most fresh and powerful in his words. The passag1e is thus given in Wright’s edition:–

The busy lark, messenger of day,
Saluteth in her song the morrow gray;
And fiery Phoebus riseth up so bright,
That all the orient laugheth of the light.

Leigh Hunt remarks with justice that “Dryden falls short of the freshness and feeling of the sentiment. His lines are beautiful, but they do not come home to us with so happy and cordial a face.”
]