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the Odyssey. His admirers have endeavoured to excuse him, by reminding us of the simplicity of the age in which he wrote; but they have not been able to prove that any ideas of dignity or importance were, even in those days, affixed to the character of an ass, or the quality of a beefcollop; therefore, they were very improper illustrations for any situation, in which a hero ought to be represented.

Virgil has degraded the wife of king Latinus, by comparing her, when she was actuated by the Fury, to a top which the boys lash for diversion. This doubtless is a low image, though in other respects the comparison is not destitute of propriety; but he is much more justly censured for the following simile, which has no sort of reference to the subject. Speaking of Turnus, he says,

Medio dux agmine Turnus

Vertitur arma tenens, et toto vertice supra est.
Ceu septem surgens sedatis amnibus altus
Per tacitum Ganges: aut pingui flumine Nilus
Cum refluit campis, et jam se condidit alveo.

But Turnus, chief amidst the warrior train,

In armour towers the tallest on the plain.

The Ganges thus by seven rich streams supplied,

A mighty mass devolves in silent pride:

Thus Nilus pours from his prolific urn,

When from the fields o'erflow'd his vagrant streams return.

These no doubt are majestic images; but they bear no sort of resemblance to a hero glittering in armour at the head of his forces.

Horace has been ridiculed by some shrewd critics for this comparison, which, however, we think is more defensible than the former. Addressing himself to Munatius Plancus, he says:

VOL. IV.

25

Albus ut obscuro deterget nubila cœlo
Sæpe Notus, neque parturit imbres
Perpetuos: sic tu sapiens finire memento
Tristitiam, vitæque labores

Molli, Plance, mero.

As Notus often, when the welkin lowers,
Sweeps off the clouds, nor teems perpetual showers,
So let thy wisdom, free from anxious strife,
In mellow wine dissolve the cares of life.

DUNKIN.

The analogy, it must be confessed, is not very striking; but nevertheless it is not altogether void of propriety. The poet reasons thus: as the south wind, though generally attended with rain, is often known to dispel the clouds, and render the weather serene; so do you, though generally on the rack of thought, remember to relax sometimes, and drown your cares in wine. your cares in wine. As the south wind is not always moist, so you ought not always to be dry.

A few instances of inaccuracy, or mediocrity, can never derogate from the superlative merit of Homer and Virgil, whose poems are the great magazines, replete with every species of beauty and magnificence, particularly abounding with similes, which astonish, delight, and transport the reader.

Every simile ought not only to be well adapted to the subject, but also to include every excellence of description, and to be coloured with the warmest tints of poetry. Nothing can be more happily hit off than the following in the Georgics, to which the poet compares Orpheus lamenting his lost Eurydice.

Qualis populeâ morens Philomela sub umbrá
Amissos queritur fœtus, quos durus arator

Observans nido implumes detraxit; at illa
Flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen
Integrat, et moestis late 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.

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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 thundering 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 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 a goat:

Ωστε λέων ἐχάρη μεγάλῳ ἐπὶ σώματι κύρσας
Εὑρὼν ἢ ἔλαφον κεραὸν, ἢ ἄγριον αἶγα, etc.

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 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; Mákota dë ή Υπερβολή ψυχρό τατον 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 sensi

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