per an. or so: The very
Senate that shou'd show an exemplary conduct, in occasions of doubtful
events, have devoted mighty sums of gold to religious uses: And who
wou'd not but admire, that, he is perswaded hath charms enough to make
the gods themselves comply! You need not wonder why painting is lost,
when gold appears more beautiful both to gods and men, than any thing
Apelles or Phidias are now esteem'd madly to have spent their time
about: But seeing your curiosity is wholly taken up with that piece,
that shews you a contracted history of the Siege of Troy: I'll try to
give you the story more at large in verse.
"Now Troy had felt a siege of ten long years,
Concern and sorrow in each face appears:
The Grecian prophet too, with terrour fill'd,
What fate decree'd, but doubtfully reveal'd:
When thus Apollo----
From the proud top of Ida's rising hill
A lofty pile of mighty cedars fell,
Whose trunks into a dreadful fabrick force,
And, let it bear the figure of a horse:
The spacious hollows, of whose mountain-womb,
The choice and flower of your troops entomb.
The Greeks, enrag'd to be so long repell'd,
With their chief troops the beasts vast bowel's fill'd,
And thus their arms and all their hopes conceal'd.
Strange was the fate the rul'd unhappy Troy,
Who thought them gone, and lasting peace t'enjoy,
So the inscription of the machine said,
And treacherous Synon, for their ruin made.
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