her as she saw her suspended by a rope.  “Live,” she said, “guilty woman! and that you may preserve the memory of this lesson, continue to hang, both you and your descendants, to all future times.”  She sprinkled her with the juices of aconite, and immediately her hair came off, and her nose and ears likewise.  Her form shrank up, and her head grew smaller yet; her fingers cleaved to her side and served for legs.  All the rest of her is body, out of which she spins her thread, often hanging suspended by it, in the same attitude as when Minerva touched her and transformed her into a spider.

Spenser tells the story of Arachne in his “Muiopotmos,” adhering very closely to his master Ovid, but improving upon him in the conclusion of the story.  The two stanzas which follow tell what was done after the goddess had depicted her creation of the olive tree: 

    “Amongst these leaves she made a Butterfly,
     With excellent device and wondrous slight,
     Fluttering among the olives wantonly,
     That seemed to live, so like it was in sight;
     The velvet nap which on his wings doth lie,
     The silken down with which his back is dight,
     His broad outstretched horns, his hairy thighs,
     His glorious colors, and his glistening eyes.”

    “Which when Arachne saw, as overlaid
     And mastered with workmanship so rare,
     She stood astonied long, ne aught gainsaid;
     And with fast-fixed eyes on her did stare,
     And by her silence, sign of one dismayed,
     The victory did yield her as her share;
     Yet did she inly fret and felly burn,
     And all her blood to poisonous rancor turn.”

[Footnote:  Sir James Mackintosh says of this, “Do you think that even a Chinese could paint the gay colors of a butterfly with more mmute exactness than the following lines:  ‘The velvet nap,’ etc.?”—­Life, Vol.  II, 246.]

And so the metamorphosis is caused by Arachne’s own mortification and vexation, and not by any direct act of the goddess.

The following specimen of old-fashioned gallantry is by Garrick: 

         “UponA lady’s embroidery

“Arachne once, as poets tell,
A goddess at her art defied,
And soon the daring mortal fell
The hapless victim of her pride.

“O, then beware Arachne’s fate;
Be prudent, Chloe, and submit,
For you’ll most surely meet her hate,
Who rival both her art and wit.”

Tennyson, in his “Palace of Art,” describing the works of art with which the palace was adorned, thus alludes to Europa: 

    “... sweet Europa’s mantle blew unclasped
       From off her shoulder, backward borne,
     From one hand drooped a crocus, one hand grasped
       The mild bull’s golden horn.”

In his “Princess” there is this allusion to Danae: 

    “Now lies the earth all Danae to the stars,
     And all thy heart lies open unto me.”