" Such event commonly have all these lovers; and he that so marries, or for such respects, let them look for no better success than Menelaus had with Helen, Vulcan with Venus, Theseus with Phaedra, Minos with Pasiphae, and Claudius with Messalina; shame, sorrow, misery, melancholy, discontent.

Homer afterwards describes Vulcan as pouring down a Storm of Fire upon the River Xanthus, and Minerva as throwing a Rock at Mars; who, he tells us, cover'd seven Acres in his Fall.

I look along each gaping gorge, I near a thousand sounding strokes, Like giants rending giant oaks, Or brawny Vulcan at his forge; I see pick-axes flash and shine, And great wheels whirling in a mine. Here winds a thick and yellow thread, A moss'd and silver stream instead; And trout that leap'd its rippled tide Have turn'd upon their sides and died.

I am now in a blacksmith's shop in the south of Ireland taking lessons from the Vulcan in horse charming and horse-shoe making.

Abraham was jealous of his wife because she was fair: so was Vulcan of his Venus, when he made her creaking shoes, saith

Cheap matter offered they to boyish wit, Those sooty knaves, precipitated down 530 With scoffs and taunts, like Vulcan out of heaven: The paramount ace, a moon in her eclipse, Queens gleaming through their splendour's last decay, And monarchs surly at the wrongs sustained By royal visages.