What can be more natural, or more moving, than the circumstances in
which he describes the behaviour of those women who had lost their
husbands on this fatal day?


Next day did many widows come
Their husbands to bewail;
They wash'd their wounds in brinish tears,
But all would not prevail.

Their bodies bathed in purple blood,
They bore with them away;
They kiss'd them dead a thousand times,
When they were clad in clay.


Thus we see how the thoughts of this poem, which naturally arise
from the subject, are always simple, and sometimes exquisitely
noble; that the language is often very sounding, and that the whole
is written with a true poetical spirit.

If this song had been written in the Gothic manner which is the
delight of all our little wits, whether writers or readers, it would
not have hit the taste of so many ages, and have pleased the readers
of all ranks and conditions. I shall only beg pardon for such a
profusion of Latin quotations; which I should not have made use of,
but that I feared my own judgment would have looked too singular on
such a subject, had not I supported it by the practice and authority
of Virgil.