Observans nido implumes detraxit; at illa

Flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen
Integrat, et mæstis latè loca questibus implet.

"So Philomela, from th' umbrageous wood,

In strains melodious mourns her tender brood,
Snatch'd from the nest by some rude ploughman's hand,
On some lone bough the warbler takes her stand;
The live-long night she mourns the cruel wrong,
And hill and dale resound the plaintive song."

Here we not only find the most scrupulous propriety, and the happiest choice, in comparing the Thracian bard to Philomel the poet of the grove; but also the most beautiful description, containing a fine touch of the pathos, in which last particular indeed Virgil, in our opinion, excels all other poets, whether ancient or modern.

One would imagine that nature had exhausted itself, in order to embellish the poems of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, with similes and metaphors. The first of these very often uses the comparison of the wind, the whirlwind, the hail, the torrent, to express the rapidity of his combatants; but when he comes to describe the velocity of the immortal horses that drew the chariot of Juno, he raises his ideas to the subject, and, as Longinus observes, measures every leap by the whole breadth of the horizon.

Οσσον δ ̓ ἡεροειδὲς ἀνὴρ ἴδεν ὀφθαλμοῖσιν

Ημενος ἐν σκοπιη, λεύσσων ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον,
Τόσσον ἐπιθρώσκουσι θεῶν ὑψεχέες ἵπποι.

"For as a watchman from some rock on high

O'er the wide main extends his boundless eye;

Through such a space of air with thund'ring sound
At ev'ry leap th' immortal coursers bound."

The celerity of this goddess seems to be a favorite idea with the

poet; for in another place, he compares it to the thought of a traveller revolving in his mind the different places he had seen, and passing through them in imagination more swift than the lightning flies from east to west.

Homer's best similes have been copied by Virgil, and almost every succeeding poet, howsoever they may have varied in the manner of expression. In the third book of the Iliad, Menelaus seeing Paris, is compared to a hungry lion espying a hind or goat:

Ωσε λέων ἐχάρη μεγάλῳ ἐπὶ σώματι κύρσας
Εὑρὼν ἢ ἔλαφον κεραόν, ἢ ἄγριον αἶγα, &c.

"So joys the lion, if a branching deer

Or mountain goat his bulky prize appear;
In vain the youths oppose, the mastiffs bay,
The lordly savage rends the panting prey.
Thus fond of vengeance, with a furious bound

In clanging arms he leaps upon the ground."

The Mantuan bard, in the tenth book of the Æneid, applies the same simile to Mezentius, when he beholds Acron in the battle.

"Impastus stabulâ altâ leo ceu sæpe peragrans
(Suadet enim vesana fames), si fortè fugacem

Conspexit capream, aut surgentem in cornua cervum ;

Gaudet hians immanè, comasque arrexit, et hæret

Visceribus super accumbens: lavit improba teter
Ora cruor.-

"Then as a hungry lion, who beholds

A gamesome goat who frisks about the folds,

Or beamy stag that grazes on the plain;
He runs, he roars, he shakes his rising mane:
He grins, and opens wide his greedy jaws,
The prey lies panting underneath his paws;

He fills his famish'd maw, his mouth runs o'er

With unchew'd morsels, while he churns the gore."

DRYDEN.

The reader will perceive that Virgil has improved the simile in one particular, and in another fallen short of his original. The description of the lion shaking his mane, opening his hideous aws distained with the blood of his prey, is great and picturesque; but on the other hand, he has omitted the ircumstance of devouring it without being intimidated, or restrained by the dogs and the youths that surround him; a circumstance that adds greatly to our ideas of his strength, intrepidity, and importance.

ESSAY XXII.

ON THE USE OP HYPERBOLE.

Of all the figures in poetry, that called the Hyperbole is mar aged with the greatest difficulty. The hyperbole is an exaggera tion with which the muse is indulged for the better illustration of her subject, when she is warmed into enthusiasm. Quintilian calls it an ornament of the bolder kind. Demetrius Phalereus is still more severe. He says the hyperbole is of all forms of speech the most frigid; Μάλιστα δὲ ἡ ̔Υπερβολὴ ψυχῇ τατον πάντων ; but this must be understood with some grains of allowance. Poetry is animated by the passions; and all the passions exaggerated. Passion itself is a magnifying medium. There are beautiful instances of the hyperbole in the Scripture, which a reader of sensibility cannot read without being strongly affected. The difficulty lies in choosing such hyperboles as the subject will admit of; for, according to the definition of Theophrastus, the frigid in style is that which exceeds the expression suitable to the

subject. The judgment does not revolt against Homer for representing the horses of Ericthonius running over the standing corn without breaking off the heads, because the whole is considered as a fable, and the north wind is represented as their sire; but the imagination is a little startled, when Virgil, in imitation of this hyperbole, exhibits Camilla as flying over it without even touching the tops.

"Illa vel intactæ segetis per summa volaret

Gramina

This elegant author, we are afraid, has upon some other occa sions degenerated into the frigid, in straining to improve upon his great master.

Homer, in the Odyssey, a work which Longinus does not scruple to charge with bearing the marks of old age, describes a storm in which all the four winds were concerned together.

Σὺν δ' Ευρός τε, Νοτός τ ̓ ἔπεσε, Ζεφυρός τε δυσας,

Καὶ Βορέης αιθρηγένετης μέγα λύμα κυλίνδων.

We know that such a contention of contrary blasts could not possibly exist in nature; for even in hurricanes the winds blow alternately from different points of the compass. Nevertheless, Virgil adopts the description, and adds to its extravagance.

"Incubuêre mari, totumque à sedibus imis

Unà Eurusque Notusque ruunt, creberque procellis

Africus."

Here the winds not only blow together, but they turn the whole body of the ocean topsy-turvy:

"East, west, and south, engage with furious sweep,
And from its lowest bed upturn the foaming deep."

["Outstripp'd the winds in speed upon the plain,
Flow o'er the fields, nor hurt the bearded grain."-DRYDEN.]

The north wind, however, is still more mischievous:

The motion of the sea between Scylla and Charybdis is still more magnified; and Ætna is exhibited as throwing out volumes of flame, which brush the stars.* Such expressions as these are

not intended as a real representation of the thing specified; they are designed to strike the reader's imagination; but they generally serve as marks of the author's sinking under his own ideas, who, apprehensive of injuring the greatness of his own conception, is hurried into excess and extravagance.

Quintilian allows the use of hyperbole, when words are wanting to express any thing in its just strength or due energy: then, he says, it is better to exceed in expression than fall short of the conception; but he likewise observes, that there is no figure or form of speech so apt to run into fustian. Nec aliâ magis via in κακοζηλιαν itur.

If the chaste Virgil has thus trespassed upon poetical probability, what can we expect from Lucan but hyperboles even more ridiculously extravagant? He represents the winds in contest, the sea in suspense, doubting to which it shall give way. He affirms, that its motion would have been so violent as to produce a second deluge, had not Jupiter kept it under by the clouds; and as to the ship during this dreadful uproar, "the sails touch the clouds, while the keel strikes the ground."

* Speaking of the first, he says,

Of the other,

"Tollimur in cœlum curvato gurgite, et iidem
Subductâ ad manes imos descendimus undâ.

"Attollitque globos flammarum, et sidera lambit."