“harder beset,
And more endangered, than when Argo passed
Through Bosphorus betwixt the justling rocks;
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned
Charybdis, and by the other whirlpool steered.”[265]
But, though frequently employing the story, Milton did not use the
proverb, and here transforms at least one of the dangers.
Not only the story, but the proverb, was known to Shakespeare, who
makes Launcelot use it in his plain talk with Jessica:--“Truly, then,
I fear you are damned both by father and mother: thus, when I shun
Scylla, your father, I fall into Charybdis, your mother: well, you are
gone both ways.”[266] Malone, in his note, written in the last century,
says: “Alluding to the well-known line of a modern Latin poet, Philippe
Gualtier, in his poem entitled ‘Alexandreïs.’” To this testimony of
Malone’s, another editor, George Steevens, whose early bibliographical
tastes excited the praise of Dibdin, adds: “Several translations of
this adage were obvious to Shakespeare. Among other places, it is found
in an ancient poem entitled ‘A Dialogue between _Custom and Veritie_,
concerning the use and abuse of Dauncing and Minstrelsie’:--
“‘While Silla they do seem to shun,
In Charibd they do fall.’”
But this proverb had already passed into tradition and speech. That
Shakespeare should seize and use it was natural. He was the universal
absorbent.
It did not require a Shakespeare to appropriate it. Brantôme, who
wrote rather from hearing than study, so that his style is a record of
contemporary language, in describing a great lady who escaped from
Turks to fall into the hands of domestic robbers, likens the case to
falling from Scylla to Charybdis.[267] A similar illustration drops
from La Fontaine:--
“La vieille, au lieu du coq, les fit tomber par là
De Charybde en Scylla.”[268]
Thomson shows that it was a common illustration, when he describes
Dunkirk as
“the Scylla since
And fell Charybdis of the British seas.”[269]
Mr. Webster, in an argument before the Supreme Court of the United
States, quotes and applies the words of Virgil describing these
opposite perils, and warns against Charybdis.[270] The great orator of
ancient Rome, in his second Philippic, where Mark Antony is assailed
with all his splendid ability, after picturing the culprit as seizing
and squandering an enormous property, exclaims: “What Charybdis was
ever so voracious? Charybdis do I say?--who, if she existed at all, was
a single animal.”[271] Antony is worse than Charybdis, but there is no
allusion to the sister peril. The proverb had no existence at that time.
The history of this verse seemed for a while forgotten. Like the
Wandering Jew, it was a vagrant, unknown in origin, but having
perpetual life. Erasmus, with learning so vast, quotes it, with the
variation _Incidit_, for _Incidis_, in his great work on Proverbs, and
owns that he does not remember its author. Here is the confession:
“_Celebratur apud Latinos hic versiculus, quocunque natus auctore,
nam in præsentia non occurrit_”: “This little verse is a commonplace
among Latin writers, whoever the author,--for he does not at present
occur to me.”[272] But, though unable to recall its origin, it is clear
that the idea it embodies found much favor with this representative of
moderation. He dwells on it with particular sympathy, and reproduces
it in various forms. This is the equivalent on which he hangs his
commentary: “_Evitata Charybdi, in Scyllam incidi_.”[273] It is
easy to see how inferior in form is this to the much quoted verse.
It seems to be a rendering of some Greek iambics, also of uncertain
origin, preserved by Apostolius,[274] one of the learned Greeks
scattered over Europe by the fall of Constantinople. Erasmus quotes
also another proverb with the same signification: “_Fumum fugiens,
in ignem incidi_,”[275] which warns against running into the fire to
avoid the smoke; and yet another, rendered from the Greek of Lucian:
“_Ignoraveram autem quod, juxta proverbium, ex fumo in ipsum ignem
compellerer_”: “But I didn’t know, that, according to the proverb, I
should be driven from the smoke into the fire itself.”[276] Horace
teaches that fools shunning vices run upon the opposite:--
“Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt”;
and then he describes one man as smelling of pastils, and another of
the goat:--
“Pastilles Rufillus olet, Gorgonius hircum.”[277]
Erasmus quotes words of kindred sentiment from the “Phormio” of
Terence: “_Ita fugias, ne præter casam_”: which he tells us means that
we should not so fly from any vice as to be incautiously carried into
a greater.[278] In his letters the ancient fable recurs more than
once. On one occasion he warns against the dangers of youth, and says,
“Instead of the ears with wax, as in the Homeric story, the mind must
be carefully sealed by the precepts of Philosophy.”[279] Again he avows
fear, lest, shunning Scylla, he fall on a much worse Charybdis: “_Nunc
vereor ne sic vitemus hanc Scyllam, ut incidamus in Charybdim multo
perniciosiorem_.”[280] And the same fear appears yet again, where he
describes his straits: “_In has angustias protrusus sum, ut mihi, si
Scyllam fugero, in Charybdim sit incidendum_.”[281] On another occasion
he pictures himself as exposed in his expenses to the most voracious
Charybdises: “_Ex his conjecturam facias licebit, quemadmodum hic
dilabantur nummi, ubi nihil non meo sumptu geritur, et est mihi res
cum duabus Charybdibus voracissimis_.”[282] The following is cited by
Jortin from another letter of Erasmus: “Some say slanderously that I
keep a medium. I confess it is a very impious thing to keep a medium
between Christ and Belial; but I think it prudential to keep a medium
between Scylla and Charybdis.”[283] Thus did his instinctive prudence
find expression in this favorite illustration.
If Erasmus were less illustrious for learning, perhaps if his
countenance were less interesting, as we look upon it in the immortal
portraits by two great artists, Hans Holbein and Albert Dürer, I should
not be tempted to dwell on this confession of ignorance. And yet it
belongs to the history of this verse, which has had strange ups and
downs. The poem from which it is taken, after enjoying early renown,
was forgotten,--and then again, after a revival, was forgotten, again
to enjoy another revival. The last time it was revived through this
solitary verse, without which, I cannot doubt, it would have expired
forever.
Even before the days of Erasmus, who died in 1536, this verse had been
lost and found. It was circulated as a proverb of unknown origin,
when Galeotto Marzio--an Italian of infinite wit and learning,[284]
who flourished in the latter half of the fifteenth century, and was
for some time instructor of the children of Matthias Corvinus, King
of Hungary--pointed out its author. In a work of _Ana_, amusing and
instructive, entitled “De Doctrina Promiscua,” which first saw the
light in Latin, and was afterwards translated into Italian, the learned
author says: “_Hoc carmen est Gualteri Galli de Gestis Alexandri, et
non vagum proverbium, ut quidam non omnino indocti meminerunt_.” It was
not a vague proverb, as some persons not altogether unlearned have
supposed, but a verse of the “Alexandreïs.” And yet shortly afterwards
the great master of proverbs, whose learning seemed to know no bounds,
could not fix its origin. At a later day, Pasquier, in his “Recherches
de la France,” made substantially the same remark as Marzio. After
alluding to the early fame of its author, he says: “_C’est luy dans
les œuvres duquel nous trouvons un vers souvent par nous allegué,
sans que plusieurs sçachient qui en fut l’auteur_.” In quoting the
verse, the French author uses _Decidit_ instead of _Incidis_.[285] The
discovery by Marzio, and the repetition of this discovery by Pasquier,
are chronicled at a later day in the Conversations of Ménage,[286] who
found a French Boswell before that of Dr. Johnson was born. Jortin, in
the elaborate notes to his Life of Erasmus, borrows from Ménage, and
gives the same history.[287]
When Galeotto Marzio made his discovery, the poem was still in
manuscript; but there were printed editions before the “Adagia” of
Erasmus. An eminent authority--the “Histoire Littéraire de la France,”
that great work, commenced by the Benedictines, and continued by
the French Academy--says that it was printed for the first time at
Strasbourg, in 1513.[288] This is a mistake which has been repeated by
Warton.[289] Brunet, in his “Manuel du Libraire,” mentions an edition,
without place or date, with the cipher of Guillaume Le Talleur, a
printer at Rouen in 1487.[290] Panzer, in his “Annales Typographici,”
describes another edition, with the monogram of Richard Pynson, the
London printer at the close of the fifteenth century.[291] Beloe, in
his “Anecdotes of Literature,” also speaks of an edition with the
imprint of Pynson.[292] There also appears to have been an edition
under date of 1496. Then came the Strasbourg edition of 1513, by J.
Adelphus. All these are in black letter. Next was the Ingolstadt
edition, in 1541, in Italic, or, as it is called by the French,
“cursive characters,” with a brief life of the poet, by Sebastian
Link. This was followed, in 1558, by an edition at Lyons, also in
Italic, announced as now for the first time appearing in France,
“_nunc primum in Gallia_,” which was a mistake. This edition seems
to have enjoyed peculiar favor. It has been strangely confounded
with imaginary editions which never existed: thus, the Italian
Quadrio notes especially one at London, in 1558;[293] and the French
Millin assures us that the best was at Leyden, in 1558.[294] No such
editions appeared; and the only edition of that year was at Lyons.
After the lapse of a century, in 1659, there was another edition, by
Athanasius Gugger, a monk of the Monastery of St. Gall, published at
the Monastery itself, from manuscripts there, and with its own types,
“_formis ejusdem_.” The editor was ignorant of the previous editions,
and in his preface announces the poem as _a new work_, although
ancient,--never before printed, to his knowledge,--eagerly regarded
and desired by many,--and not less venerable for antiquity than for
erudition: “_En tibi, candide Lector, opus novum, ut sit antiquum,
nusquam, quod sciam, editum, a multis cupide inspectum et desideratum,
non minus antiquitate quam eruditione venerabile_.”[295] This edition
seems to have been repeated at St. Gall in 1693; and these two, which
were the last, appear to have been the best. From that time the poem
rested undisturbed until our own day, when it found a place in that
magnificent collection of patristic learning, the “Patrologiæ Cursus
Completus” of Migne.[296] Such an edition ought to be useful in
determining the text, for there must be numerous manuscripts in the
Paris libraries. As long ago as 1795 there were no less than nineteen
in the National Library, and also a manuscript at Tours, which had
drawn forth a curious commentary by M. de Foncemagne.[297]
I ought not to forget here that in 1537 a passage from this poem
was rendered into English blank verse, and is an early monument
of our language. This was by Nicholas Grimoald, a native of
Huntingdonshire, whose translation is entitled “The Death of Zoroas,
an Egyptian Astronomer, in the First Fight that Alexander had with
the Persians.”[298] This is not the only token of the attention it
awakened in England. Alexander Ross, chaplain of Charles the First,
and author, famous from a couplet of “Hudibras,” made preparations for
an edition. His dedicatory letter was written, bearing date 1644, with
two different sets of dedicatory verses, and verses from his friend
David Echlin, the scholarly physician to the king,[299] who had given
him this “great treasure.” But the work failed to appear. The identical
copy presented by Echlin, with many marginal notes from Quintus Curtius
and others, is mentioned as belonging to the Bishop of Ely at the
beginning of the present century.[300] But the homage of the Scotchman
still exists in his Dedicatory Epistle: “_Si materiam consideres,
elegantissimam utilissimamque historiam gestorum Alexandri magni
continet; certe, sive stylum, sive subjectum inspicias, dignam invenies
quæ omnium teratur manibus, quamque adolescentes_
‘Nocturna versentque manu, versentque diurna.’”[301]
It will be observed that he borrows superlatives to praise this poem as
“most elegant and most useful,” and by style and subject worthy of the
daily and nightly study of youth. In his verses Ross declares Alexander
not less fortunate in his poet than the Greek chieftain in Homer:--
“Si felix præcone fuit dux Græcus Homero,
Felix nonne tuo est carmine dux Macedo?”[302]
There was also another edition planned in France, during the latter
part of the last century, by M. Daire, the librarian of the Celestines
in Paris, founded on the Latin text, according to the various
manuscripts, with a French translation; but this never appeared.[303]
Until its late appearance in the collection of Migne, it was only
in ancient editions that this poem could be found. Of course these
are rare. The British Museum, in its immense treasure-house, has the
most important, one of which belonged to the invaluable legacy of the
late Mr. Grenville. The copy in the library of Lord Spencer is the
Lyons edition of 1558. By a singular fortune, this volume was missing
some time ago from its place on the shelves; but it has since been
found; and I have now before me a tracing from its title-page. My own
copy--and the only one which I know this side of the Atlantic--is the
Ingolstadt edition. It once belonged to John Mitford, and has on the
fly-leaves notes in the autograph of this honored lover of books.
Bibliography dwells with delight upon this poem, although latterly
the interest centres in a single line. Brunet does full justice to
it. So does his jealous rival, Graesse, except where he blunders.
Watt, in his “Bibliotheca Britannica,” under the name “Galtherus,
Philip,” mentions the Lyons edition of 1558, on which he remarks, “The
typography is very singular”; and then, under the name “Gualterus, de
Castelliona,” he mentions the edition of St. Gall in 1659. Curiously,
the learned bibliographer seems to suppose these two editions to be
different works, by different authors,--as they stand far apart, and
without reference from one to the other. Clarke, in his “Repertorium
Bibliographicum,” bearing date 1819, where he gives an account of the
most celebrated British libraries, mentions a copy of the first edition
in the library of Mr. Steevens,[304] who showed his knowledge of the
poem in his notes to Shakespeare; also a copy of the Lyons edition of
1558 in the library of the Marquis of Blandford, afterwards Duke of
Marlborough. This learned bibliographer has a note calling attention
to the fact that “there are variations in the famous disputed line in
different editions of this poem,”--that in the first edition the line
begins “_Corruis in Syllam_” but in the Lyons edition “_Incidis in
Scyllam_” while, as we have already seen, Pasquier says, “_Decidit
in Scyllam_.”[305] Lowndes, in his “Bibliographer’s Manual,” says of
the poem, “In it will be found that trite verse so often repeated,
‘_Incidis_,’” etc.,--words which seem borrowed from Beloe.[306] “Trite”
is hardly respectful.
Very little is known of the author. He is called in Latin Philippus
Gualterus or Galterus; in French it is sometimes Gaultier and sometimes
Gautier. The French biographical dictionaries, whether of Michaud or
Didot, attest the number of persons with this name, of all degrees
and professions. There was the Norman knight _sans Avoir_, a chief of
the first Crusade. There also was another Gautier, known as the Sire
d’Yvetot, stabbed to death by his sovereign, Clotaire, who is said
afterwards in penitence to have erected the lordship of Yvetot into
that kingdom which Béranger has immortalized. And there have been
others in every walk of life. Fabricius, in his “Bibliotheca Latina
Mediæ et Infimæ Ætatis,”[307] mentions no less than seventy-two Latin
authors of this name. A single verse has saved one of these from the
oblivion that has overtaken the multitude.
He was born at Lille, but at what precise date is uncertain. Speaking
generally, it may be said that he lived and wrote during the second
half of the twelfth century, while Louis the Seventh and Philip
Augustus were kings of France, and Henry the Second and Richard
Cœur-de-Lion ruled England, one century after Abélard, and one century
before Dante. After studying at Paris, he went to establish himself at
Châtillon,--but it is not known at which of the numerous towns of this
name in France. Here he was charged with the direction of the schools,
and became known by the name of the town, as appears in the epitaph,
ambitiously suggestive of Virgil, which he wrote for himself:--
“Insula me genuit, rapuit Castellio nomen;
Perstrepuit modulis Gallia tota meis.”
But he is known sometimes by his birthplace, and sometimes by his early
residence. The highest French authority calls him “Gaultier of Lille,
or of Châtillon.”[308] He has been sometimes confounded with Gaultier
of Coutances, Archbishop of Rouen, who was born in the island of
Jersey,[309]--and sometimes with the Bishop of Maguelonne of the same
name, reputed author of an Exposition of the Psalter, whose see was on
an island in the Mediterranean, near the coast of France.[310]
Not content with residence at Châtillon, he repaired to Bologna, in
Italy, where he studied the Civil and Canon Law. Returning to France,
he became secretary of two successive Archbishops of Rheims, the latter
of whom, by the name of William,--a descendant by his grandmother from
William the Conqueror,--occupied this place of power from 1176 to 1201.
The secretary enjoyed the favor of the Archbishop, who seems to have
been fond of letters. It was during this period that he composed, or
at least finished, his poem. Its date is sometimes placed at 1180; and
there is an allusion in its text which makes it near this time. Thomas
à Becket was assassinated before the altar of Canterbury in 1170;
and this event, so important in the history of the age, is mentioned
as recent: “_Nuper … cæsum dolet Anglia Thomam._”[311] The poem was
dedicated to the Archbishop, who was to live immortal in companionship
with his secretary:--
“Vivemus pariter, vivet cum vate superstes
Gloria Guillermi, nullum moritura per ævum.”[312]
The grateful Archbishop bestowed upon the poet a stall in the cathedral
of Amiens, where he died of the plague at the commencement of the
thirteenth century.[313]
This does not appear to have been his only work. Others are attributed
to him. There are dialogues _adversus Judæos_, which Oudin publishes in
his collection entitled “Veterum aliquot Galliæ et Belgii Scriptorum
Opuscula Sacra nunquam edita.” This same Oudin, in another publication,
speaks of “Opuscula Varia,” preserved among the manuscripts in the
Imperial Library[314] of France, as by Gaultier, although the larger
part of these Opuscula have been ascribed to a very different person,
Gaultier Mapes, chaplain to Henry the Second, King of England, and
Archdeacon of Oxford.[315] But more recent researches would restore
them to Philip Gaultier. An edition appeared at Hanover, in Germany, in
1859, by W. Müldener, after the Paris manuscripts, with the following
title: “Die zehn Gedichte des Walther von Lille genannt von Châtillon,
zum ersten Male vollständig herausgegeben.” Among these are satirical
songs in Latin on the World, and also on Prelates, which, it is said,
were sung in England as well as throughout France.[316] Indeed, the
second verse of the epitaph already quoted may point to these satires:--
“Perstrepuit _modulis_ Gallia tota _meis_.”
Here, as in the “Alexandreïs,” we encounter the indignant sentiments
inspired by the assassination of Becket. The victim is called “the
flower of priests,” and the king “_Neronior est ipso Nerone_” which
may be translated by Shakespeare’s “out-Herods Herod.” But these
poems, whether by Walter Mapes or Philip Gaultier, are forgotten. The
“Alexandreïs” has a different fortune.
* * * * *
The poem became at once famous. It had the success of Victor
Hugo or Byron. Its author took rank, not only at the head of his
contemporaries, but even among classics of antiquity. Leyser chronicles
no less than ninety-nine Latin poets in the twelfth century,[317] but
we are assured that not one of them is comparable to Gaultier.[318] M.
Édélestand du Méril, who has given especial attention to this period,
speaks of the “Alexandreïs” as a “great poem,” and remarks that its
“Latinity is very elegant for the time.”[319] Another authority calls
him “the first of the modern Latin poets who appears to have had a
spark of true poetic genius.”[320] And still another says, that,
“notwithstanding all its defects, we must regard this poem, and the
‘Philippis’ of William of Brittany, which appeared about sixty years
later, as two brilliant phenomena in the midst of the thick darkness
which covered Europe, from the decline of the Roman Empire to the
revival of letters in Italy.”[321] Pasquier, to whom I have already
referred, goes so far, in his chapter on the University of Paris, as
to illustrate its founder, Peter Lombard, as having for a contemporary
“one Galterus, an eminent poet, who wrote in Latin verses the life
of Alexander, under the title of the ‘Alexandreïs,’ a great imitator
of Lucan”; and the learned writer then adds, that it is in his work
that we find a verse often quoted without knowing the author.[322]
These testimonies show his position among contemporaries; but there is
something more.
An anonymous Latin poet of the next century, who has left a poem
on the life and miracles of Saint Oswald, calls Homer, Gaultier,
and Lucan the three capital heroic poets. Homer, he says, has
celebrated Hercules,--Gaultier, the son of Philip,--and Lucan, so he
declares, swells the praises of Cæsar; but these heroes deserve to be
immortalized in verse much less than the holy confessor Oswald.[323]
In England, the Abbot of Peterborough transcribed Seneca, Terence,
Martial, Claudian, and the “Gesta Alexandri.”[324] Even in Iceland
there was an early version, edited at a later day by Arnas Magnæus
(the Latin for Arne Magnussen), Secretary and Antiquary to the King of
Denmark, and Professor in the University of Copenhagen, who, styling
the poem the “Gualterian Alexandreïs,” characterizes the Icelandic
version as “the incomparable monument of Northern antiquity.”[325]
The new poem was studied, even to the exclusion of ancient masters and
of Virgil himself. Henry of Ghent, who wrote about 1280, says that it
“was of such dignity in the schools of the grammarians that the reading
of the ancient poets was comparatively neglected.”[326] This testimony
is curiously confirmed by the condition of the manuscripts that have
come down to us, most of which are loaded with glosses and interlinear
explanations, doubtless for public use in the schools.[327] It is
sometimes supposed that Dante repaired to Paris. It is certain that
his excellent master, Brunetto Latini, passed much time there. This
must have been at the very period when the new poem was taught in the
schools. Perhaps it may be traced in the “Divina Commedia.”
Next after the tale of Troy, the career of Alexander was at this period
the most popular subject for poetry, romance, or chronicle. The Grecian
conqueror filled a vast space in the imagination. He was the centre
of marvel and of history. Every modern literature, according to its
development, testifies to this predominance. Even dialects testify,
and so does art. Wood engraving is supposed to have been invented in
Italy, somewhere about 1285, by the two Cunio, and their earliest work
was a representation, in eight parts, of the actions of Alexander,
with explanatory verses in Latin beneath the prints.[328] In France,
the professors of grammar at Toulouse were directed by statutes of
the University, dated 1328, to read to their pupils “De Historiis
Alexandri.”[329] In England, during the reign of Henry the Third, the
sheriff was ordered to procure the Queen’s chamber at Nottingham to be
painted with the history of Alexander,--“_Depingi facias historiam,
Alexandri circumquaque_.”[330] Chaucer, in his “House of Fame,” places
Alexander with Hercules,[331] and then again shows the universality of
his renown:--
“The storie of Alexandre is so commune,
That every wight that hath discretioun
Hath herd somwhat or all of his fortune.”[332]
We have the excellent authority of the poet Gray for the remark, that
the Alexandrine verse, which “like a wounded snake drags its slow
length along,” took its name from an early poem in this measure,
called “La Vie d’Alexandre.” There was also the “Roman d’Alexandre,”
contemporary with the “Alexandreïs,” which Gray thinks was borrowed
from the latter, apparently because the authors say that they took it
from the Latin.[333] There was also “The Life and Actions of Alexander
the Macedonian,” originally written in Greek, by Simeon Seth, magister,
and protovestiary or wardrobe-keeper of the palace at Constantinople,
in 1070, and translated from Greek into Latin, and thence into French,
Italian, and German.[334] Other forms have been perpetuated by the
bibliographical care of the Roxburghe Club and the Bannatyne Club.
Arabia contributed her stories, and the Grecian conqueror became a
hero of romance. Like Charlemagne, he had his twelve peers; and he
also had a horn to proclaim his word of command, which took sixty men
to blow, and was heard sixty miles,--being the same which Orlando
sounded afterwards at Roncesvalles. That great career, which was one
of the epochs of mankind, which carried in its victorious march the
Greek language and Greek civilization, which at the time enlarged the
geography of the world, opening the way to India, and which Plutarch
in his “Morals” makes so Christian, was overlaid by an incongruous
mass of fable and anachronism, so that the real story disappeared.
Times, titles, and places were confounded. Monks and convents, churches
and confessors, were mixed with achievements of the hero; and in an
early Spanish History of Alexander, by Juan Lorenzo Segura, we meet
such characters as Don Phœbus, the Emperor Jupiter, and the Count Don
Demosthenes, and others with the constant prefix of Don; and the mother
of Achilles is represented as placing him, when a child, in a convent
of Benedictine nuns,--thus subjecting the early hero as the later to
the same jumble of Heathen and Christian mythology.[335]
* * * * *
Philip Gaultier, with all his genius, has incongruities and
anachronisms; but his poem is founded substantially upon the History
of Quintus Curtius, which he has done into Latin hexameters, with
the addition of long speeches and some few inventions. Aristotle
is represented with a hideous exterior, face and body lean, hair
neglected, and the air of a pedant exhausted by study. The soldiers of
Alexander are called Quirites, as if they were Romans. The month of
June in Greece is described as if it were in Rome:--
“Mensis erat, cujus juvenum de nomine nomen.”[336]
Events connected with the passion of Jesus Christ are treated as having
already passed in the time of Alexander.
The poem is divided into ten books, corresponding to the number in the
original of Curtius,[337] and the ten initial letters of the books,
when put together like an acrostic, spell the name of the Archbishop,
_Guillermus_, the equivalent for William at that time, the patron of
the poet. Besides this conceit, there is a dedication both at the
beginning and the end. Quantity, especially in Greek or Asiatic words,
is disregarded; and there are affectations in style, of which the very
beginning is an instance:--
“_Gesta_ ducis Macepûm totum _digesta_ per orbem,
…
Musa, refer.”[338]