Kidderminster.
_"Aquæ in Vinum conversæ. Vidit et erubuit lympha pudica Deum."_--The
interesting note under this title (Vol. vi., p. 358.) refers to
Campbell's _Poets_. The following is an extract from Campbell:
"Richard Crashaw there [Cambridge] published his Latin poems,
in one of which is the epigram from a Scripture passage:
"_Lympha_ pudica Deum vidit et _erubuit_.'"
Campbell's _Brit. Poets_, ed. 1841, p. 198.
In the _Poemata Anglorum Latina_ is the following epigram on our
Saviour's first miracle at the marriage feast:
"Unde rubor vestris et non sua purpura lymphis,
Quæ rosa mirantes tam nova mutat aquas?
Numen (convivæ) præsens agnoscite numen--
Vidit et erubuit _nympha_ pudica Deum."
I presume this epigram is Crashaw's poem to which Campbell refers; but
query. Until I saw the note in "N. & Q.," I supposed that the celebrated
line--
"Lympha pudica Deum vidit et erubuit."
was the happy _ex tempore_ produce of Dryden's early genius, when a
boy, at Westminster School. If the epigram which I have copied is the
original, the last line is surely much improved by the (traditional) line
which Campbell has recorded. Surely _lympha_ is preferable to _nympha_;
and surely the order of the word erubuit ending the line is the best.