in India; and such an expression is used to designate an opening in the hills which divide England and Scotland. But there is some fabulous account of Alexander the Great having shut up the defiles of Caucasus with iron gates, in order to confine the Scythians within these bounds; and the poet may possibly have had this in his mind.
As when, from sun or nightly planet shed,
Clear water has the quivering radiance caught,
The flashes through the spacious mansion fly
With reaching leap, right, left, and low and high.
Stanza lxxi. lines 5, 6, 7, 8.
Apollonius Rhodius is the inventor of the simile; but it is from Virgil, in his 8th book of the Æneid, that Ariosto has borrowed his illustration.
Cuncta videns, magno curarum fiuctuat æstu,
Atque animum nunc huc celerem, nunc dividit illuc,
In partesque rapit varias, perque omnia versat.
Sicut aquæ tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis
Sole repercussum aut radiantis imagine lunæ,
Omnia pervolitat late loca, jamque sub auras
Erigitur, summique ferit laquearia tecti.
Thus translated by Dryden:
So when the sun by day, or moon by night,
Strike on the polished brass their trembling light,
The glittering species here and there divide,
And cast their dubious beams from side to side;
Now on the walls, now on the pavement play,
And to the ceiling flash the glaring day.
These lines may exemplify what the best translation was in point of accuracy. I will not take what some might think captious exceptions at such words as species, or day, in its second place, which is rendered equivocal by the use made of it in the
