Who, still unlaunched from Grecian docks,

Had never passed the Azure rocks;

But now I fear her trip will be a

Damn'd business for my Miss Medea, etc., etc.[15]

 June, 1810. [First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, i. 227.] 

FOOTNOTES:

[15] ["I am just come from an expedition through the Bosphorus to the Black Sea and the Cyanean Symplegades, up which last I scrambled with as great risk as ever the Argonauts escaped in their hoy. You remember the beginning of the nurse's dole in the Medea [lines 1-7], of which I beg you to take the following translation, done on the summit;—[A 'damned business'] it very nearly was to me; for, had not this sublime passage been in my head, I should never have dreamed of ascending the said rocks, and bruising my carcass in honour of the ancients."—Letter to Henry Drury, June 17, 1810, Letters, 1898, i. 276. 

[15]

 Euripides, Medea, lines 1-7—  Εἴθ' ὤφελ' Ἀργοῦς μὴ διαπτάσθαι σκάφος κ.τ.λ. ] 

 Εἴθ' ὤφελ' Ἀργοῦς μὴ διαπτάσθαι σκάφος κ.τ.λ. 

MY EPITAPH.[16]

Youth, Nature, and relenting Jove,

Youth

To keep my lamp in strongly strove;[11]

[11]

But Romanelli was so stout,

He beat all three—and blew it out.

 Prev. P 30/693 next