Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 339, January, 1844 by Various
page 82 of 314 (26%)
page 82 of 314 (26%)
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shoulders, so that the bull might be compared to a ship, of which the
damsel's veil was the sail. Around them dolphins were sporting in the water, and winged loves fluttering in the air, so admirably depicted, that the spectator might fancy he saw them in motion. One Cupid guided the bull, while others hovered round bearing bows and quivers, and brandishing nuptial torches, regarding Jupiter with arch and sidelong glances, as if conscious that it was by their influence that the god had assumed the form of an animal." To return to Clitophon and his tale. He begins by informing his hearer, that he is the son of Hippias, a noble and wealthy denizen of Tyre, and that he had been betrothed from his childhood, as was not unusual in those times,[2] to his own half-sister Calligone:--but Leucippe, the daughter of Sostratus, a brother of Hippias, resident at Byzantium, having arrived with her mother Panthia, to claim the hospitality of their Tyrian relatives during a war impending between their native city and the Thracian tribes, Clitophon at once becomes enamoured of his cousin, whose charms are described in terms of glowing panegyric:--"She seemed to me like the representation of Europa, which I see in the picture before me--her eye beaming with joy and happiness--her locks fair,[3] and flowing in natural ringlets, but her eyebrows and eyelashes jetty black--her complexion fair, but with a blush in her cheeks like that faint crimson with which the Lydian women stain ivory, and her lips like the hue of a fresh-opened rose." Love is not, however, in this case, as in that of Theagenes and Chariclea, instantaneous on both sides; and the expedient adopted by Clitophon, with the aid of his servant Satyrus, (a valet of the _Scapin_ school,) to win the good graces of the lady, are detailed at length, evincing much knowledge of the human heart in the author, and affording considerable insight into the domestic arrangements of a |
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