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 populea marens Philomela sub umbrá So Philomela, from th' umbrageous wood In strains melodius mourns her tender brood, 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 comba tants: 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' ἠεροειδὲς ἀνὴς ἴδεν ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ་ For as a watchman from some rock on high 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 goat: Ωσε λέων ἐχάρη μεγαλω ἐπὶ σώματι κύρσας So joys the lion, if a branching deer The Mantuan bard in the tenth book of the Æneid, applies the same simile to Mezentius, when he beholds Acron in the battle. Impastus stabula alta leo ceu sæpe peragrans Then as a hungry lion, who beholds A gamesome goat who frisks about the folds, He grins and opens wide his greedy jaws, 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. Μαλιςα δε η Υπερβολη ψυχρότατον πανίων ; 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 intacte 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 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, 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. Incubuere mari, totumque à sedibus imis Una Eurusque Notusque ruunt, creberque procellis 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, 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, 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, appre * Speaking of the first, he says, Tollimur in cælum curvato gurgite, et iidem Subducta ad manes imos descendimus undâ. Of the other, Attollitque globos flammarum, et sidera lambit. |