href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@29574@[email protected]#f16" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">16] Other inventions of Barksted include a picture of her father with which Mirrha converses (pp. 126-127), pictures of her suitors (p. 128), a picture of her mother, over which she throws a veil (p. 128) and a description of Mirrha herself (pp. 131-132). Later in the story Mirrha meets a satyr named Poplar (unknown to Ovid), who makes free with her (pp. 148-155). As punishment for such goings on in Diana's sacred grove, he is to be metamorphosed into the tree that now bears his name (even as Mirrha is subsequently transformed into the tree that produces myrrh).

The Scourge of Venus, though following Ovid's story more closely than Mirrha, expands Golding by more than 600 lines, to a little more than the average length of the Elizabethan minor epic. In the process, Mirrha is assigned lustful dreams not found in Ovid (p. 236), and is impelled to write a long letter to her father (pp. 237-240). Shortly thereafter, the author introduces an emphatically Christian digression on the horror of Mirrha's "fowle incestious lust" and on the importance of reading "Gods holy Bible" as a salve for sin (p. 243), and invents the Nurse's prolix arguments against such "filthy" love as Mirrha desires (pp. 248-251).[17] The fact that the author follows Ovid's story as closely as he does should be taken as a commentary on his limited powers of invention rather than on his devotion to the art of translation.

Bandello, I, 27, Belleforest, 18, Whetstone's Rocke of Regard, 2, Fenton's Tragicall Discourses, 13, and Painter's Palace of Pleasure, II, 29[18] have all been listed as possible sources for Dom Diego and Ginevra.[19] Grosart regarded Fenton's work, 1579, as the source from which Lynche got the bare bones of his story, and Arber agreed.[20] But though Jeannette Fellheimer could find no evidence that Lynche knew Belleforest's or Fenton's version of the tale, she demonstrated, on the basis of two very close parallels, that he knew Painter's.[21] In support of Fellheimer's view, one notes that Lynche follows Painter in employing the form "Cathelo[y]gne"[22] (p. 63) rather than Fenton's "Catalonia."[23]

Barksted may have known ballads on the subject of Hiren, alluded to in stanza 34 of his poem, as well as Peele's lost play The Turkish Mahomet and Hyren the fair Greek. But like Lynche, he seems heavily indebted to a tale by Painter, in this case "Hyerenee the Faire Greeke."[24] Among other equally striking but less sustained correspondences between Painter's prose narrative and Barksted's minor epic verse, one notes the following, in which Mahomet's confidant Mustapha attempts to reanimate his leader's martial spirit, drowned in uxoriousness: "But nowe I cannot revive the memorie of your father Amurate, but to my great sorow and griefe, who by the space of XL. yeres made the sea and earth to tremble and quake ... [and so cruelly treated the Greeks] that the memorie of the woundes do remaine at this present, even to the mountaines of Thomao and Pindus: he subjugated ... all the barbarous nations, from Morea to the straits of Corinthe. What neede I here to bring in the cruel battell that he fought with the Emperour Sigismunde and Philip duke of Burgundia wherein he overthrew the whole force of the Christians, toke the emperour prisoner, and the duke of Burgundie also ... or to remember other fierce armies which he sent into Hungarie."[25]

Barksted versifies this speech in stanzas 1 and 2, putting it at the beginning instead of toward the end, where it comes in Painter's novella. By a poetic license, Barksted credits all these achievements to the son, none to the father. Barksted follows Painter's story quite closely, but he cuts, amplifies and invents in order to develop its minor epic potentialities. Thus, in addition to turning Painter's prose into the sixains of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, he cuts the length of Painter's tale by about two-thirds. In the process, much of Painter's attention to historical detail, his complication of plot, and his tedious moralizing are mercifully lost. By way of amplification in the minor epic mode, Barksted expands as follows Mahomet's brief command in Painter that Hiren should "adorne herselfe with her most precious jewels, and