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

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 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.

"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,

Flew 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 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 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."

"Nubila tanguntur velis, et terra carinâ."

This image of dashing water at the stars, Sir Richard Blackmore has produced in colors truly ridiculous. Describing spouting whales in his Prince Arthur, he makes the following comparison:

"Like some prodigious water engine made

To play on heaven, if fire should heaven invade."

The great fault in all these instances is a deviation from propriety, owing to the erroneous judgment of the writer, who, endeavoring 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 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 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 thunderbolts forging under the hammers of the Cyclops.

"Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ
Addiderant, rutili tres ignis et alitis Austri.

"Three rays of writhen rain, of fire three more,

Of winged southern winds and cloudy store,

As many parts, the dreadful mixture frame."-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 thunderbolts.

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"O, then I see queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies

Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spinner's legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;

The traces, of the smallest spider's web;

The collars, of the moonshine's watry 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 moonbeams 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 ode and satire admit of the boldest hyperboles; such exaggerations suit the impetuous warmth of the one; and in the other have a good effect in exposing folly, and exciting horror against vice. They may be likewise successfully used in comedy, for moving and managing the powers of ridicule.

ESSAY XXIII.

ON VERSIFICATION.

Verse is a harmonious arrangement of long and short syllables, adapted to different kinds of poetry, and owes its origin entirely to the measured cadence, or music, which was used when the first songs or hymns were recited. This music, divided into different parts, required a regular return of the same measure, and thus every strophe, antistrophe, stanza, contained the same

number of feet. To know what constituted the different kinds of rhythmical feet among the ancients, with respect to the number and quantity of their syllables, we have nothing to do but to consult those who have written on grammar and prosody: it is the business of a schoolmaster, rather than the accomplishment of a man of taste.

essays

Various have been made in different countries to compare the characters of ancient and modern versification, and to point out the difference beyond any possibility of mistake. But they have made distinctions, where in fact there was no difference, and left the criterion unobserved. They have transferred the name of rhyme to a regular repetition of the same sound at the end of the line, and set up this vile monotony as the characteristic of modern verse, in contradistinction to the feet of the ancients, which they pretend the poetry of modern languages will not admit.

Rhyme, from the Greek word Puμos, is nothing else but number, which was essential to the ancient, as well as to the modern versification. As to the jingle of similar sounds, though it was never used by the ancients in any regular return in the middle, or at the end of the line, and was by no means deemed essential to the versification, yet they did not reject it as a blemish, where it occurred without the appearance of constraint. We meet with it often in the epithets of Homer; Agyvoɛolo, Biolo -Αναξ Ανδρών, Αγαμεμνον—almost the whole frst ode of Anacreon is what we call rhyme. The following line of Virgil has been admired for the similitude of sound in the first two words:

"Ore Arethusa tuo siculis confunditur undis."

Rhythmus, or number, is certainly essential to verse, whether in the dead or living languages; and the real difference between