Note 40 — Chapter VIII · THE MUSTER OF THE LATIN TRIBES.
Reading edition
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 in his ‘Sad Shepherd,’ where Æglamour laments his lost Earinè:—
“Here she was wont to go, and here, and here— Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow; The world may find the spring by following her, For other print her airy steps ne’er left. Her treading would not bend a blade of grass, Or shake the downy blow-bell from his stalk: But like the south-west wind she shot along, And where she went the flowers took thickest root, As she had sowed them with her odorous foot.” —The ‘Sad Shepherd,’ Act I. sc. 1.