Chapitre 113

L. 18. A cette mer trompeuse et se livre et s’engage. The preposition à required by se livrer, is an archaism after s’engager. For à=sur see Haase, § 130 B, and cf. note to p. 97, l. 383. It would seem, at first sight, that s’engager sur says less than se livrer à, but it makes the step more irretrievable.

Ll. 25 ff. heureux dont le zèle… Elliptical for ‘heureux celui dont le zèle,’ on the analogy of ‘heureux qui…’

L. 27. ses flancs. The shipwrecked man’s sides.

Ll. 28. Réchauffer dans son sein. The rescuer’s bosom.

L. 29. Et de soit fol amour. The shipwrecked man’s love. There is throughout these lines a sad confusion due to a loose use of the possessive, besides which le zèle (l. 25) is awkwardly made the subject of the whole sentence.—_Étouffer la semence._ The same metaphor occurs in La Fontaine, Ode pour la paix: ‘Étouffe tous ces travaux et leurs semences mortelles,’ and in Racine, Alexandre, VI. iii: ‘Étouffe dans mon sang ces semences de guerre.’

L. 33. Plaindre… l’occasion ravie. Plaindre = ‘to lament, regret,’ as in ‘Ce triste et fier honneur m’émeut sans m’ébranler; J’aime ce qu’il me donne et je plains ce qu’il m’ôte,’ Corneille, Hor. II. iii.

Ll. 35 ff. Tibullus, III. iii.

L. 38. l’or du Pactole. The river Pactolus, in Lydia, was famed for its golden sands.

L. 40. mon coeur… prosterné. An incoherent metaphor.

L. 60. See Horace, Od. I. xxxiii.

Ll. 61. Lesbie, Lesbia, Catullus’ mistress.

L. 62. Cynthie, Cynthia, Propertius’ mistress.

L. 64. See Virgil, Ecl. x.

L. 66. Ovid was an exile at Tomi, in Scythia, whence he addressed much base flattery to the emperor, and where he wrote his Tristia.

L. 73. un tel foudre. According to French grammars, foudre is generally feminine in its proper sense and masculine in its figurative sense, when it designates a man: La foudre a éclaté. C’est un foudre de guerre. Ayer, § 69. But see LITTRÉ, where foudre, poetic for ‘catastrophe, destruction,’ appears as a masculine noun in two quotations from Corneille (Hor. IV. v. and Héracl. I. iv.), and as a feminine noun in Bossuet, Mar.-Thér.

L. 93. Castor, son of Jupiter, was immortal. When his brother Pollux died, Castor prayed Jupiter that Pollux might be made immortal. As the prayer could not be granted entirely, immortality was divided among the two, so that they lived and died alternately.

Ll. 95, 96. Virgil has celebrated them in his Églogues. For the episode of Nisus see Aen. ix.

L. 99. Le Brun. ‘Son of the author of the poem La Religion, and grandson of the great Racine; he died at Cadiz, at the time of the disaster which destroyed Lisbon and shook all the coast of Portugal and Spain.’ (_Note of A. Chénier._)

L. 102. leçons d’Ascra, Ascraean lessons. Hesiod was born at Ascra in Boeotia. Hence Virgil calls his poem Ascraeum carmen, Georg. ii.