well-armed footmen of various tribes, whose shields seem to cover the plain.
This pretty picture of Camilla, the Volscian huntress (whom Dryden very ungallantly terms a "virago"), vowed from her childhood to Diana—the prototype of Tasso's Clorinda, but far more attractive—closes at once the warlike pageant and the book:—
"Last marches forth for Latium's sake
Camilla fair, the Volscian maid,
A troop of horsemen in her wake
In pomp of gleaming steel arrayed;
Stern warrior-queen! those tender hands
Ne'er plied Minerva's ministries:
A virgin in the fight she stands,
Or wingèd winds in speed outvies;
Nay, she could fly o'er fields of grain
Nor crush in flight the tapering wheat,
Or skim the surface of the main
Nor let the billows touch her feet.
Where'er she moves, from house and land
The youths and ancient matrons throng,
And fixed in greedy wonder stand,
Beholding as she speeds along:
In kingly dye that scarf was dipped:
'Tis gold confines those tresses' flow:
Her pastoral wand with steel is tipped,
And Lycian are her shafts and bow."[1]
- ↑ No doubt the Camilla of the Roman poet is a reminiscence of the Amazon Penthesilea in Homer, just as the fairy footstep, that left no trace on sea or land, is borrowed from those wondrous mares of Ericthonius to whom Homer assigns the same performance. But the copy far surpasses the original in grace and beauty. Our English poets have made free use of this fancy of the footsteps of beauty: none more sweetly than Jonson
