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' ἀεροειδὲς ἀνὴρ ἴδεν ὀφθαλμοῖσιν
Ημενος ἐν σκοπιη, λεύσσων ἐπὶ οἴκοπα πόντον,
Τόσσον ἐπιθρώσκεσι θεῶν ὑψηχέες ἵπποι.

For as a watchman from some rock on high
O'er the wide main extends his boundless eye;
Thro' 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 favourite 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 similies 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 αἴγα, &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 clinging arms he leaps upon the ground.

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

Impastus stabula alta leo ceu sæpe peragrans
(Suadet enim vesana fames) si forte fugacem
Conspexit capream, aut surgentem in cornua cervum ;
Gaudet hians immane, 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 jaws distained with the blood of his prey, is great and picturesque : 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 importance.

ESSAY XVII.

Of all the figures in Poetry, that called the Hyperbole is managed with the greatest difficulty. The Hyperbole is an exaggeration, 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. Máısa dì ✯ Υπερβολὴ ψυχρότατον πάντων: but this must be understood with some grains of allowance. Poetry is animated by the passions; and all the passions exaggerate. 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 intacta segetis per summa volaret
Gramina-

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

Homer

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 δυσαής,
Καὶ Βορέης αιθρηγένετης μέγα λῦμα 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.

1

Incubuere muri, totumque à sedibus imis

Una Eurusque Notusque ruunt, creberque procellis

• Africus.

Here the winds not only blow together, but they turn the whole body of the ocean topsy turvey.

East, West, and South, engage with furious sweep,
And from its lowest bed upturn the foaming deep.

The North wind, however, is still more mischievous.

Stridens aquilone procella

Velum adversa ferit, fluctusque ad sidera tollit.
The sail then Boreas rends with hideous cry,
And whirls the madd'ning billows to the sky.

The motion of the sea between Scyllaand Charyb dis is still more magnified; and Etna 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 * Speaking of the first, he says,

Tollimur in cælum curvato gurgite, et iidem
Subducta ad manes imos descendimus undâ

Of the other,

Autollitque globos flammarum, esidera lumbit.

FF 2

injuring

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 xana 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 suspence, 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

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