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 Hy

rate.

perbole 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. Masa dè n' Υπερβολή ψυχρότατον πάντων: but this must be understood with some grains of allowance. Poetry is animated by the passions; and all the passions exaggePassion 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 re- ́ volt 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 sigetis 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 describes a storm in which all the four winds were concerned together.

old

age,

Σὺν δ ̓ Ευρός τε, Νοτός τ' ἔπεσε, Ζεφυρός τε δυσαής,

Καὶ Βορέης αιθρηγένετης μέγα λύμα 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.

Incubuere mari, totumque á 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 mischie

vous.

-Stridens aquilone procella

Velum adversa ferit, flustusque 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 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 *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, esidera lambit.

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 xaxonλav 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 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 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 thunder-bolts.

O, then I see queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fancy's midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agat-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,

Drawn with a team of little atomies,
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep :
Her waggon spokes made of long spinners legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;

The traces, of the smallest spider's web;

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 other implements of queen Mab's harness, which though extremely slender and diminutive, are neverthless objects of the touch, and may be conceived capable of use.