and somewhere
mentions _Olores purpureos_. Virgil has _Purpuream vomit ille animam_;
and Homer calls the sea _purple_, and gives it in some other book the
same epithet, when in a storm.

The general idea, however, has been fondly adopted by the finest writers
in Europe. The PURPLE of the ancients is not known to us. What idea,
therefore, have the moderns affixed to it? Addison, in his Vision of the
Temple of Fame, describes the country as "being covered with a kind of
PURPLE LIGHT." Gray's beautiful line is well known:--

The bloom of young desire and _purple light_ of love.

And Tasso, in describing his hero Godfrey, says, Heaven

Gli empie d'onor la faccia, e vi riduce
Di Giovinezza _il bel purpureo lume_.

Both Gray and Tasso copied Virgil, where Venus gives to her son AEneas--

----_Lumenque_ Juventae
_Purpureum_.

Dryden has omitted the _purple light_ in his version, nor is it given by
Pitt; but Dryden expresses the general idea by

---- With hands divine,
Had formed his curling locks and _made his temples shine_,
And given his rolling eys a _sparkling grace_.

It is probable that Milton has given us his idea of what was meant by
_this purple light_, when applied to the human countenance, in the
felicitous expression of

CELESTIAL ROSY-RED.

Gray appears to me to be indebted to Milton for a hint for the opening
of his Elegy: as in the first line he had Dante and Milton in his mind,
he perhaps might also in the following passage have recollected a
congenial one in Comus, which he altered. Milton, describing the
evening, marks it out by

---- What time the _laboured ox_
In his loose traces from the furrow came,
And the _swinkt hedger_ at his supper sat.

Gray has

The _lowing herd_ wind slowly o'er the lea,
The _ploughman_ homeward plods his weary way.

Warton has made an observation on this passage in Comus; and observes
further that it is a _classical_ circumstance, but not a _natural_ one,
in an _English landscape_, for our ploughmen quit their work at noon. I
think, therefore, the imitation is still more evident; and as Warton
observes, both Gray and Milton copied here from books, and not from
life.

There are three great poets who have given us a similar incident.

Dryden introduces the highly finished picture of the _hare_ in his Annus
Mirabilis:--

_Stanza_ 131.
So I have seen some _fearful hare_ maintai