It would be instructive to draw together a collection of etymologies
which have been woven into verse. These are so little felt to be alien
to the spirit of poetry, that they exist in large numbers, and often
lend to the poem in which they find a place a charm and interest of
their own. In five lines of _Paradise Lost_ Milton introduces four such
etymologies, namely, those of the four fabled rivers of hell, though
this will sometimes escape the notice of the English reader:

'Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly _hate_,
Sad Acheron of _sorrow_, black and deep,
Cocytus, named of _lamentation_ loud
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon,
Whose waves of torrent _fire_ inflame with rage.'

'Virgil, that great master of the proprieties,' as Bishop Pearson has
so happily called him, does not shun, but rather loves to introduce
them, as witness his etymology of 'Byrsa,' _Aen_. i. 367, 368; v. 59,
63 [but the etymology here is imaginative, the name _Byrsa_ being of
Punic, that is of Semitic, origin, and meaning 'a fortress'; compare
Heb. _Bozrah_]; of 'Silvius,' _Aen_. vi. 763, 765; of 'Argiletum,'
where he is certainly wrong (_Aen_. viii. 345); of 'Latium,' with
reference to Saturn having remained _latent_ there (_Aen_. viii. 322;
of. Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 238); of 'Laurens' (_Aen_. vii. 63):

Latiumque vocari
Maluit, his quoniam _latuisset_ tutus in oris:

and again of 'Avernus' (=[Greek: aornos], _Aen_. vi. 243); being indeed
in this anticipated by Lucretius (vi. 741):