. . " ("AEn." iii. 340.)
which some foolish grammarian has ended for him with a half-line of
nonsense:-
"Peperit fumante Creusa."
For Ascanius must have been born some years before the burning of
that city, which I need not prove. On the other side we find also
that he himself filled up one line in the sixth AEneid, the
enthusiasm seizing him while he was reading to Augustus:-
"Misenum AEolidem, quo non praestantior alter
AEre ciere viros, . . . "
to which he added in that transport, Martemque accendare cantu, and
never was any line more nobly finished, for the reasons which I have
given in the "Book of Painting."
On these considerations I have shunned hemistichs, not being willing
to imitate Virgil to a fault, like Alexander's courtiers, who
affected to hold their necks awry because he could not help it. I
am confident your lordship is by this time of my opinion, and that
you will look on those half-lines hereafter as the imperfect
products of a hasty muse, like the frogs and serpents in the Nile,
part of them kindled into life, and part a lump of unformed,
unanimated mud.
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