Of Iphigenia going to be sacrificed at the mo ment when mæstum ante aras astare parentem Sensit, & hunc propter ferrum celare ministros.* Of Fear, in Book iii. v. 155. Sudorem itaque & pallorem existere toto Without specifying the various strokes of nature with which Virgil has described the prognostics of the weather in his first Georgic, let us only consider with what energy he has enumerated and particularized the gestures and attitudes of his dying Dido: No five verses ever contained more images, or images more distinctly expressed: Illa graves oculos conata attollere, rursus M 2 The *Book i. v. 21. + Æn. iv. 688. The words of Virgil have here painted the dying Dido as powerfully as the pencil of Reynolds has done when she is just dead. But none of the Roman writers has displayed a greater force and vigour of imagination than TACITUS, who was, in truth, a great poet.* With what an assemblage of masterly strokes has he exhibited the distress of the Roman army under Cacina, in the first book of the Annals! No* per diversa inquies; cum barbari festis epulis, lato cantu, aut truci sonore, subjecta vallium ac resultantes saltus, complerent. Apud Romanos, invalidi ignes, interruptæ voces, atque ipsi passim adjacerent vallo, oberrarent tentoriis, insomnes magis quam pervigiles, ducemque terruit dira quies. And what a spectre he then immediately calls up, in the style of MICHAEL ANGELO! Nam Quintilium Varum, sanguine oblitum, & paludibus emersum, cernere & audire visus est, velut vocantem, "The Cyropædia of Xenophon is vague and languid; the Anabasis circumstantial and animated;" says the learned and ingenious Historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. ii. p. 467. vocantem, non tamen obsecutus, & manum intendentis repulisse. A celebrated foreigner, the Count Algarotti, has passed the following censure on our poetry, as deficient in this respect: "La poesia dei populi settentrionali pare a me, che, generalmente parlando, consista più di pensieri, che d'immagini, si compiaccia delle riflessione equalmente che dei sentimenti non sia cosi particolareggiata, e pittoresca come e la nostra. Virgilio a cagione d'esempio rappresentando Didone quando esce alla caccia fa una tal descrizione del suo vestimento, che tutti i ritrattisti, leggendo quel passo, la vestirebbono a un modo: Tandem progreditur, magnâ stipante caterva, Non cosi il MILTONO quando descrive la nuda bellezza di Eva: Grace was in all her steps, heav'n in her eye; Con quella parole generale, e astratte idee di grazia, cielo, amore, e maestà non pare a lei che ognu o si formi in mente una Eva a posta sua ?"* It must, indeed, be granted, that this passage gives no distinct and particular idea of the person of Eve; but in how many others has Milton drawn his figures, and expressed his images, with energy and distinctness? Under a coronet his flowing hair In curls on either cheek play'd; wings he wore Dire was the tossing, deep the groans; DESPAIR From See his works. Livorno. t. 8. + Par. Lost, b. iii. v. 640. B. xi. v. 489. d; From his slack hand the garland, wreath'd for Eve, And SPENSER, the master of MILTON, So much abounds in portraits peculiarly marked, and strongly created, that it is difficult to know which to select from this copious magazine of the most lively painting. The same may be said of SHAKESPEARE, whose little touches of nature it is no wonder VOLTAIRE could not relish, who affords no example of this beauty in his Henriade, and gives no proofs of a picturesque fancy, in a work that abounds more in declamation, in moral and political reflections, than in poetic images; in which there is little character, and less nature; and in which the author himself appears throughout the piece, and is himself the hero of his poem.† I have dwelt the longer on this subject, because I think I can perceive many symptoms, † As much as the author has ventured to censure the epic poem of Voltaire, yet he greatly admires many of his trage dies. |