Bo joys the lion, if a branching deer The Mantuan bard in the tenth book of the Eneid, applies the same simile to Mezentius, when 1 he beholds Acron in the battle. 2 Impastus stabula alta leo ceu sæpe peragrans Cora cruor. Then as a hungry lion, who beholds A gamesome goat who frisks about the folds, He grins and opens wide his greedy jaws, The prey lies panting underneath his paws; 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 jaws distained with the blood of his prey, is great and pic:turesque: but on the other hand, he has omitted the circumstance of devouring it without being intimidated, or restrained by the dogs and youths that surround him; a circumstance that adds greatly to our idea of his strength, intrepidity, and im:portance. VOL IV. ESSAY 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 alia magis via in xxx 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. Nubila tanguntur velis, et terra carina. This image of dashing water at the stars, Sir Richard Blackmore has produced in colours truly ridiculous. Describing spouting whales in his Prince Arthur, he makes the following comparison: Like some prodigious water-engine made To play on heav'n, if fire should heav'n invade. The great fault in all these instances is a deviation from propriety, owing to the erroneous judgment of the writer, who, endeavouring to captivate the admiration with novelty, very often shocks the understanding with extravagance. Of this nature is the whole description of the Cyclops, both in the Odyssey of Homer and in the Æneid of Virgil. It must be owned however that the Latin Poet with all his merit is more apt than his great original to dazzle us us with false fire, and practise upon the imagination. with gay conceits, that will not bear the critic's examipation. There is not in any of Homer's works now subsisting such an example of the false sublime, as Virgil's description of the thunder-bolts forging under the hammers of the Cyclops. Tres imbristorti radios, tres nabis aquosæ DRYDEN. This is altogether a fantastic piece of affectation, of which we can form no sensible image, and serves to chill the fancy, rather than warm the admiration of a judging reader. Extravagant Hyperbole is a weed that grows in great plenty through the works of our admired Shakspeare. In the following description, which hath been much celebrated, one sees he has had an eye to Virgil's thunder-bolts. O, then I see queen Mab hath been with you. Her waggon spokes made of long spinner's legs; The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams, &c. Even in describing fantastic beings, there is a propriety to be observed; but surely nothing can be 1 inore revolting to common sense, than this numbering of the moon beams among the other implements of queen Mab's harness, which, though extremely slender and diminutive, are nevertheless objects of the touch, and may be conceived capable of use. The or heroic, distinguished by six feet dactyls and spon-dées, the fifth being always a dactyl, and the last a spondee: e. g. Principi-is obs-ta, se ro medi-cina pa-ratur: The pentameter of five feet, dactyls and spondees,” of of six, reckoning two cæsuras. Cum mala per lon·gas invalu-ere mo ras. They had likewise the iambic of three sorts, the dimeter, the trimeter, and the tetrameter, and all the different kinds of lyric verse specified in the odes of Sappho, Alcæus, Anacreon, and Horace. Each of these was distinguished by the number, as well as by the species of their feet; so that they were doubly restricted. Now all the feet of the antient poetry are still found in the versification of living languages; for as cadence was regulated by the ear, it was impossible for a man to write melodious verse without naturally falling into the use of antient feet, though perhaps he neither knows their measure nor denomination. Thus Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, and all our Poets, abound with dactyls, spondees, trochees, anapests, &c. which they use indiscriminately in all kinds of composition whether Tragic, Epic, Pastoral, or Ode, having in this particular greatly the advantage of the antients, who were restricted to particular kinds of feet in particular kinds of Verse. If we then are confined with the fetters of what is called rhyme, they were restricted to particular species of feet; so that the advantages and disadvantages are pretty equally balanced: but indeed the English are more free in this particular, than any other modern nation. They not us with false fire, and practise upon the imagination with gay conceits, that will not bear the critic's examination. There is not in any of Homer's works now subsisting such an example of the false sublime, as Virgil's description of the thunder-bolts forging under the hammers of the Cyclops. Tres imbristorti radios, tres nubis aquosa Three rays DRYDEN. This is altogether a fantastic piece of affectation, of which we can form no sensible image, and serves to chill the fancy, rather than warm the admiration of a judging reader. Extravagant Hyperbole is a weed that grows in great plenty through the works of our admired Shakspeare. In the following description, which hath been much celebrated, one sees he has had an eye to Virgil's thunder-bolts. O, then I see queen Mab hath been with you. Her waggon spokes made of long spinner's legs; The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams, &c. Even in describing fantastic beings, there is a propriety to be observed; but surely nothing can be more revolting to common sense, than this numbering of the moon beams among the other implements of queen Mab's harness, which, though extremely slender and diminutive, are nevertheless objects of the touch, and may be conceived capable of use. The |