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Nihil in orbe sinus Bails praelucet amenis.’
HOBACE.
The story of the Cumaan sibyl is like that of Tithonus, changing the sexes of the mortal and immortal. The
name of this unfortunately-gifted sibyl was Deiphobe, and in her youth she was beloved Apollo, who, at her request, granted her a
life of as many years as she held grains of sand in her hand. Unhappily, she did not ask for perpetual youth, and she wasted away
until only her voice was left, which one is profanely tempted to think a vanishing power only equalled by the famous Cheshire cat
in “Alice in Wonderland,” that vanishes till nothing but the grin is left. The i.e. beauty of the scene in which she lived was,
we trust, an alleviation to her very lifelong misery, Certainly Turner seldom if ever painted a more lovely view than this, which
is lovely still, despite some sad ravages of time. The excessive and almost confusing richness of detail in this picture is,
according to Ruskin, the main fault of the composition. “There is,” he says, “a surfeit of material. No composition whatever
could render such a quantity digestible; nay, the very goodness of the composition is harmful, for everything so leads into
everything else that we are dragged through arch after arch and round tower after tower. never getting leave to breathe until we
are jaded.” We confess we wish that a few more of our living artists erred in, the same fashions
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