The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Chapter XVIII: Beauty of Language 1
• Chapter XIX: Comparisons
• Chapter XX: Figures
• Chapter XXI: Narration and Description
• Chapter XXII: Epic and Dramatic Composition
• Chapter XXIII: The Three Unities
• Chapter XXIV: Gardening and Architecture
• Chapter XXV: Standard of Taste
• Appendix
• Books Written By the Same Author Printed For J. Bell and W. Creech, Edinburgh; G. Robinson and T. Cadell, London.

CHAPTER XIX

Comparisons

Comparisons, as observed above,* serve two purposes: when addressed to the understanding, their purpose is to instruct; when to the heart, their purpose is to please. Various means contribute to the latter; first, the suggesting some unusual resemblance or contrast; second, the setting an object in the strongest light; third, the associating an object with others that are agreeable; fourth, the elevating an object; and, fifth, the depressing it. And that comparisons may give pleasure by these various means, appears from what is said in the chapter above cited; and will be made still more evident by examples, which shall be given after premising some general observations.

Objects of different senses cannot be compared together; for such objects, being entirely separated from each other, have no circumstance in common to admit either resemblance or contrast. Objects of hearing may be compared together, as also of taste, of smell, and of touch: but the chief fund<184> of comparison are objects of sight; because, in writing or speaking, things can only be compared in idea, and the ideas of sight are more distinct and lively than those of any other sense.

When a nation emerging out of barbarity begins to think of the fine arts,1 the beauties of language cannot long lie concealed; and when discovered, they are generally, by the force of novelty, carried beyond moderation. Thus, in the early poems of every nation, we find metaphors and similes founded on slight and distant resemblances, which, losing their grace with their novelty, wear gradually out of repute; and now, by the improvement of taste, none but correct metaphors and similes are admitted into any polite composition. To illustrate this observation, a specimen shall be given afterward of such metaphors as I have been describing: with respect to similes, take the following specimen.

Behold, thou art fair, my love: thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Mount Gilead: thy teeth are like a flock of sheep from the washing, every one bearing twins: thy lips are like a thread of scarlet: thy neck like the tower of David built for an armoury, whereon hang a thousand shields of mighty men: thy two breasts like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies: thy eyes like the fish-pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim: thy nose like the tower of Lebanon, looking toward Damascus.

Song of Solomon.<185>

Thou art like snow on the heath; thy hair like the mist of Cromla, when it curls on the rocks and shines to the beam of the west: thy breasts are like two smooth rocks seen from Branno of the streams; thy arms like two white pillars in the hall of the mighty Fingal.

Fingal.

It has no good effect to compare things by way of simile that are of the same kind; nor to compare by contrast things of different kinds. The reason is given in the chapter quoted above; and the reason shall be illustrated by examples. The first is a comparison built upon a resemblance so obvious as to make little or no impression.

• This just rebuke inflam’d the Lycian crew,
• They join, they thicken and th’ assault renew:
• Unmov’d th’ embody’d Greeks their fury dare,
• And fix’d support the weight of all the war;
• Nor could the Greeks repel the Lycian pow’rs,
• Nor the bold Lycians force the Grecian tow’rs.
• As on the confines of adjoining grounds,
• Two stubborn swains with blows dispute their bounds;
• They tugg, they sweat; but neither gain, nor yield,
• One foot, one inch, of the contended field:
• Thus obstinate to death, they fight, they fall;
• Nor these can keep, nor those can win the wall.

• Iliad xii. 505.

Another, from Milton, lies open to the same objection. Speaking of the fallen angels searching for mines of gold:<186>

• A numerous brigade hasten’d: as when bands
• Of pioneers with spade and pick-ax arm’d,
• Forerun the royal camp to trench a field
• Or cast a rampart.2

The next shall be of things contrasted that are of different kinds.

This comparison has scarce any force: a man and a lion are of different species, and therefore are proper subjects for a simile; but there is no such resemblance between them in general, as to produce any strong effect by contrasting particular attributes or circumstances.

A third general observation is, That abstract terms can never be the subject of comparison, otherwise than by being personified. Shakespear compares adversity to a toad, and slander to the bite of a crocodile; but in such comparisons these abstract terms must be imagined sensible beings.

To have a just notion of comparisons, they<187> must be distinguished into two kinds; one common and familiar, as where a man is compared to a lion in courage, or to a horse in speed; the other more distant and refined, where two things that have in themselves no resemblance or opposition, are compared with respect to their effects. This sort of comparison is occasionally explained above;* and for further explanation take what follows. There is no resemblance between a flower-plot and a cheerful song; and yet they may be compared with respect to their effects, the emotions they produce being similar. There is as little resemblance between fraternal concord and precious ointment; and yet observe how successfully they are compared with respect to the impressions they make.

For illustrating this sort of comparison, I add some more examples:

These quotations are from the poems of Ossian, who abounds with comparisons of this delicate kind, and appears singularly happy in them.*

I proceed to illustrate by particular instances the different means by which comparisons, whether of the one sort or the other, can afford pleasure; and, in the order above established, I begin with such instances as are agreeable, by suggesting some unusual resemblance or contrast:<189>

• Sweet are the uses of Adversity,
• Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
• Wears yet a precious jewel in her head.

• As you like it, act 2. sc. 1.

Gardiner.

• Bolingbroke hath seiz’d the wasteful King.
• What pity is’t that he had not so trimm’d
• And dress’d his land, as we this garden dress,
• And wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees;
• Lest, being over proud with sap and blood,
• With too much riches it confound itself.
• Had he done so to great and growing men,
• They might have liv’d to bear, and he to taste
• Their fruits of duty. All superfluous branches
• We lop away, that bearing boughs may live:
• Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,
• Which waste and idle hours have quite thrown down.

• Richard II. act 3. sc. 7.4

• See, how the Morning opes her golden gates,
• And takes her farewell of the glorious Sun;
• How well resembles it the prime of youth,
• Trimm’d like a younker prancing to his love!

• Second part Henry VI. act 2. sc. 1.5

Brutus.

• O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb,
• That carries anger as the flint bears fire:
• Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
• And straight is cold again.

• Julius Caesar, act 4. sc. 3.

• Thus they their doubtful consultations dark
• Ended, rejoicing in their matchless chief:
• As when from mountain-tops, the dusky clouds
• Ascending, while the North-wind sleeps, o’erspread<190>
• Heav’n’s cheerful face, the lowring element
• Scowls o’er the darken’d landscape, snow, and show’r;
• If chance the radiant sun with farewell sweet
• Extends his ev’ning-beam, the fields revive,
• The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds
• Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.

• Paradise Lost, book 2.

• As the bright stars, and milky way,
• Show’d by the night, are hid by day:
• So we in that accomplish’d mind,
• Help’d by the night, new graces find,
• Which, by the splendor of her view,
• Dazzled before, we never knew.

• Waller.6

The last exertion of courage compared to the blaze of a lamp before extinguishing, Tasso Gierusalem, canto 19. st. 22.

None of the foregoing similes, as they appear to me, tend to illustrate the principal subject: and therefore the pleasure they afford must arise from suggesting resemblances that are not obvious: I mean the chief pleasure; for undoubtedly a beautiful subject introduced to form the simile affords a separate pleasure, which is felt in the similes mentioned, particularly in that cited from Milton.

The next effect of a comparison in the order mentioned, is to place an object in a strong point<191> of view; which effect is remarkable in the following similes:

• As when two scales are charg’d with doubtful loads,
• From side to side the trembling balance nods,
• (While some laborious matron, just and poor,
• With nice exactness weighs her woolly store),
• Till pois’d aloft, the resting beam suspends
• Each equal weight; nor this nor that descends:
• So stood the war, till Hector’s matchless might,
• With fates prevailing, turn’d the scale of fight.
• Fierce as a whirlwind up the wall he flies,
• And fires his host with loud repeated cries.

• Iliad, b. xii. 521.

• Ut flos in septis secretis nascitur hortis,
• Ignotus pecori, nullo contusus aratro,
• Quem mulcent aurae, firmat sol, educat imber,
• Multi illum pueri, multae cupiere puellae;
• Idem, cum tenui carptus defloruit ungui,
• Nulli illum pueri, nullae cupiere puellae:
• Sic virgo, dum intacta manet, dum cara suis; sed
• Cum castum amisit, polluto corpore, florem,
• Nec pueris jucunda manet, nec cara puellis.

• Catullus.7

The imitation of this beautiful simile by Ariosto, canto 1. st. 42. falls short of the original. It is also in part imitated by Pope.*

Lucetta.

• I do not seek to quench your love’s hot fire,
• But qualify the fire’s extreme rage,<192>
• Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason.

Julia.

• The more thou damm’st it up, the more it burns:
• The current, that with gentle murmur glides,
• Thou know’st, being stopp’d, impatiently doth rage;
• But when his fair course is not hindered,
• He makes sweet music with th’ enamel’d stones,
• Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
• He overtaketh in his pilgrimage:
• And so by many winding nooks he strays
• With willing sport, to the wild ocean.
• Then let me go, and hinder not my course:
• I’ll be as patient as a gentle stream,
• And make a pastime of each weary step,
• Till the last step have brought me to my love;
• And there I’ll rest, as, after much turmoil,
• A blessed soul doth in Elysium.

• Two Gentlemen of Verona, act 2. sc. 10.8

• ——— She never told her love;
• But let concealment, like a worm i’ th’ bud,
• Feed on her damask cheek: she pin’d in thought;
• And with a green and yellow melancholy,
• She sat like Patience on a monument,
• Smiling at Grief.

• Twelfth-Night, act 2. sc. 6.9

York.

• Then, as I said, the Duke, great Bolingbroke,
• Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed,
• Which his aspiring rider seem’d to know,
• With slow but stately pace, kept on his course:
• While all tongues cry’d, God save thee, Bolingbroke.

Duchess.

Alas! poor Richard, where rides he the while!<193>

York.

• As in a theatre, the eyes of men,
• After a well grac’d actor leaves the stage,
• Are idly bent on him that enters next,
• Thinking his prattle to be tedious:
• Even so, or with much more contempt, mens eyes
• Did scowl on Richard; no man cry’d, God save him!
• No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home;
• But dust was thrown upon his sacred head:
• Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off,
• His face still combating with tears and smiles,
• The badges of his grief and patience;
• That had not God, for some strong purpose, steel’d
• The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted,
• And barbarism itself have pitied him.

• Richard II. act 5. sc. 3.10

Northumberland.

• How doth my son and brother?
• Thou tremblest, and the whiteness in thy cheek
• Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.
• Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
• So dull, so dead in look, so wo-be-gone,
• Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night,
• And would have told him, half his Troy was burn’d;
• But Priam found the fire, ere he his tongue:
• And I my Piercy’s death, ere thou report’st it.

• Second part, Henry IV. act 1. sc. 3.11

• Why, then I do but dream on sov’reignty,
• Like one that stands upon a promontory,
• And spies a far-off shore where he would tread,
• Wishing his foot were equal with his eye,
• And chides the sea that sunders him from thence,
• Saying, he’ll lave it dry to have his way:
• So do I wish, the crown being so far off,<194>
• And so I chide the means that keep me from it,
• And so (I say) I’ll cut the causes off,
• Flatt’ring my mind with things impossible.

• Third part, Henry VI. act 3. sc. 3.12

• ——— Out, out, brief candle!
• Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
• That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
• And then is heard no more.

• Macbeth, act 5. sc. 5.

• O thou Goddess,
• Thou divine Nature! how thyself thou blazon’st
• In these two princely boys! they are as gentle
• As zephyrs blowing below the violet,
• Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough,
• (Their royal blood inchaf’d) as the rudest wind,
• That by the top doth take the mountain-pine,
• And make him stoop to th’ vale.

• Cymbeline, act 4. sc. 4.13

Why did not I pass away in secret, like the flower of the rock that lifts its fair head unseen, and strows its withered leaves on the blast?

Fingal.

There is a joy in grief when peace dwells with the sorrowful. But they are wasted with mourning, O daughter of Toscar, and their days are few. They fall away like the flower on which the sun looks in his strength, after the mildew has passed over it, and its head is heavy with the drops of night.

Fingal.<195>

The sight obtained of the city of Jerusalem by the Christian army, compared to that of land discovered after a long voyage, Tasso’s Gierusalem, canto 3. st. 4. The fury of Rinaldo subsiding when not opposed, to that of wind or water when it has a free passage, canto 20. st. 58.

As words convey but a faint and obscure notion of great numbers, apoet, to give a lively notion of the object he describes with regard to number, does well to compare it to what is familiar and commonly known. Thus Homer* compares the Grecian army in point of number to a swarm of bees: in another passage† he compares it to that profusion of leaves and flowers which appear in the spring, or of insects in a summer’s evening: and Milton,

• ——— As when the potent rod
• Of Amram’s son, in Egypt’s evil day,
• Wav’d round the coast, up call’d a pitchy cloud
• Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
• That o’er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
• Like night, and darken’d all the land of Nile:
• So numberless were those bad angels seen,
• Hovering on wing under the cope of hell,
• ’Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires.

• Paradise Lost, book 1.

Such comparisons have, by some writers,* been<196> condemned for the lowness of the images introduced: but surely without reason; for, with regard to numbers, they put the principal subject in a strong light.

The foregoing comparisons operate by resemblance; others have the same effect by contrast.

York.

• I am the last of Noble Edward’s sons,
• Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first;
• In war, was never lion rag’d more fierce;
• In peace, was never gentle lamb more mild;
• Than was that young and princely gentleman.
• His face thou hast, for even so look’d he,
• Accomplish’d with the number of thy hours.
• But when he frown’d, it was against the French,
• And not against his friends. His noble hand
• Did win what he did spend; and spent not that
• Which his triumphant father’s hand had won.
• His hands were guilty of no kindred’s blood,
• But bloody with the enemies of his kin.
• Oh, Richard! York is too far gone with grief,
• Or else he never would compare between.

• Richard II. act 2. sc. 3.14

Milton has a peculiar talent in embellishing the principal subject by associating it with others that are agreeable; which is the third end of a comparison. Similes of this kind have, beside, a separate effect: they diversify the narration by new images that are not strictly necessary to the comparison: they are short episodes, which, without<197> drawing us from the principal subject, afford great delight by their beauty and variety:

• He scarce had ceas’d, when the superior fiend
• Was moving toward the shore; his pond’rous shield,
• Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,
• Behind him cast; the broad circumference
• Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
• Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
• At ev’ning from the top of Fesole,
• Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
• Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.

• Milton, b. 1.

• ——— Thus far these, beyond
• Compare of mortal prowess, yet observ’d
• Their dread commander. He, above the rest
• In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
• Stood like a tow’r; his form had yet not lost
• All her original brightness, nor appear’d
• Less than archangel ruin’d, and th’ excess
• Of glory obscur’d: as when the sun new-risen
• Looks through the horizontal misty air
• Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon
• In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
• On half the nations, and with fear of change
• Perplexes monarchs.

• Milton, b. 1.

• As when a vulture on Imaus bred,
• Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,
• Dislodging from a region scarce of prey
• To gorge the flesh of lambs, or yeanling kids,
• On hills where flocks are fed, flies toward the springs<198>
• Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams,
• But in his way lights on the barren plains
• Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
• With sails and wind their cany waggons light:
• So on this windy sea of land, the fiend
• Walk’d up and down alone, bent on his prey.

• Milton, b. 3.

• ——— Yet higher than their tops
• The verdurous wall of paradise up sprung:
• Which to our general fire gave prospect large
• Into this nether empire neighbouring round.
• And higher than that wall, a circling row
• Of goodliest trees loaden with fairest fruit,
• Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue,
• Appear’d, with gay enamel’d colours mix’d,
• On which the sun more glad impress’d his beams
• Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow,
• When God hath show’r’d the earth; so lovely seem’d
• That landscape: and of pure now purer air
• Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
• Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
• All sadness but despair: now gentle gales
• Fanning their odoriferous wings dispense
• Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
• Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail
• Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
• Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
• Sabean odour from the spicy shore
• Of Araby the Blest; with such delay
• Well-pleas’d they slack their course, and many a league,
• Cheer’d with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles.

• Milton, b. 4.<199>

With regard to similes of this kind, it will readily occur to the reader, that when a resembling subject is once properly introduced in a simile, the mind is transitorily amused with the new object, and is not dissatisfied with the slight interruption. Thus, in fine weather, the momentary excursions of a traveller for agreeable prospects or elegant buildings, cheer his mind, relieve him from the languor of uniformity, and without much lengthening his journey in reality, shorten it greatly in appearance.

Next of comparisons that aggrandize or elevate. These affect us more than any other sort: the reason of which may be gathered from the chapter of Grandeur and Sublimity; and, without reasoning, will be evident from the following instances:

• As when a flame the winding valley fills,
• And runs on crackling shrubs between the hills,
• Then o’er the stubble, up the mountain flies,
• Fires the high woods, and blazes to the skies,
• This way and that, the spreading torrent roars;
• So sweeps the hero through the wasted shores.
• Around him wide, immense destruction pours,
• And earth is delug’d with the sanguine show’rs.

• Iliad xx. 569.

• Through blood, through death, Achilles still proceeds,
• O’er slaughter’d heroes, and o’er rolling steeds.
• As when avenging flames with fury driv’n
• On guilty towns exert the wrath of Heav’n,<200>
• The pale inhabitants, some fall, some fly,
• And the red vapours purple all the sky:
• So rag’d Achilles; Death, and dire dismay,
• And toils, and terrors, fill’d the dreadful day.

• Iliad xxi. 605.

• Methinks, King Richard and myself should meet
• With no less terror than the elements
• Of fire and water, when their thund’ring shock,
• At meeting, tears the cloudy cheeks of heav’n.

• Richard II. act 3. sc. 5.15

I beg peculiar attention to the following simile, for a reason that shall be mentioned:

• Thus breathing death, in terrible array,
• The close-compacted legions urg’d their way:
• Fierce they drove on, impatient to destroy;
• Troy charg’d the first, and Hector first of Troy.
• As from some mountain’s craggy forehead torn,
• A rock’s round fragment flies with fury borne,<201>
• (Which from the stubborn stone a torrent rends)
• Precipitate the pond’rous mass descends;
• From steep to steep the rolling ruin bounds:
• At every shock the crackling wood resounds;
• Still gath’ring force, it smokes; and, urg’d amain,
• Whirls, leaps, and thunders down, impetuous to the plain:
• There stops—So Hector. Their whole force he prov’d:
• Resistless when he rag’d; and when he stopt, unmov’d.

• Iliad xiii. 187.

The image of a falling rock is certainly not elevating;* and yet undoubtedly the foregoing simile fires and swells the mind: it is grand therefore, if not sublime. And the following simile will afford additional evidence, that there is a real, tho’ nice, distinction between these two feelings:

• So saying, a noble stroke he lifted high,
• Which hung not, but so swift with tempest fell
• On the proud crest of Satan, that no sight,
• Nor motion of swift thought, less could his shield
• Such ruin intercept. Ten paces huge
• He back recoil’d; the tenth on bended knee
• His massy spear upstaid; as if on earth
• Winds under ground or waters forcing way,
• Sidelong had push’d a mountain from his seat
• Half-sunk with all his pines.

• Milton, b. 6.

A comparison by contrast may contribute to grandeur or elevation, no less than by resemblance;<202> of which the following comparison of Lucan is a remarkable instance:

Considering that the Heathen deities possessed a rank but one degree above that of mankind, I think it would not be easy by a single expression, to exalt more one of the human species, than is done in this comparison. I am sensible, at the same time, that such a comparison among Christians, who entertain more exalted notions of the Deity, would justly be reckoned extravagant and absurd.

The last article mentioned, is that of lessening or depressing a hated or disagreeable object; which is effectually done by resembling it to any thing low or despicable. Thus Milton, in his description of the rout of the rebelangels, happily expresses their terror and dismay in the following simile:

• ——— As a herd
• Of goats or timorous flock together throng’d,
• Drove them before him thunder-struck, pursu’d
• With terrors and with furies to the bounds
• And crystal wall of heav’n, which op’ning wide,
• Rowl’d inward, and a spacious gap disclos’d
• Into the wasteful deep: the monstrous sight
• Struck them with horror backward, but far worse
• Urg’d them behind; headlong themselves they threw<203>
• Down from the verge of heav’n.

• Milton, b. 6.

In the same view, Homer, I think, may be justified in comparing the shouts of the Trojans in battle to the noise of cranes,* and to the bleating of a flock of sheep:* it is no objection that these are low images; for it was his intention to lessen the Trojans by opposing their noisy march to the silent and manly march of the Greeks. Addison,† describing the figure that men make in the sight of a superior being, takes opportunity to mortify their pride by comparing them to a swarm of pismires.17

A comparison that has none of the good effects mentioned in this discourse, but is built upon common and trifling circumstances, makes a mighty silly figure:

By this time, I imagine, the different purposes of comparison, and the various impressions it makes on the mind, are sufficiently illustrated by proper examples. This was an easy task. It is more difficult to lay down rules about the proprie-<204>ty or impropriety of comparisons; in what circumstances they may be introduced, and in what circumstances they are out of place. It is evident, that a comparison is not proper on every occasion: a man when cool and sedate, is not disposed to poetical flights, nor to sacrifice truth and reality to imaginary beauties: far less is he so disposed, when oppressed with care, or interested in some important transaction that engrosses him totally. On the other hand, a man, when elevated or animated by passion, is disposed to elevate or animate all his objects: he avoids familiar names, exalts objects by circumlocution and metaphor, and gives even life and voluntary action to inanimate beings. In this heat of mind, the highest poetical flights are indulged, and the boldest similes and metaphors relished.‡ But without soaring so high, the mind is frequently in a tone to relish chaste and moderate ornament; such as comparisons that set the principal object in a strong point of view, or that embellish and diversify the narration. In general, when by any animating passion, whether pleasant or painful, an impulse is given to the imagination; we are in that condition disposed to every sort of figurative expression, and in particular to comparisons. This in a great measure<205> is evident from the comparisons already mentioned; and shall be further illustrated by other instances. Love, for example, in its infancy, rousing the imagination, prompts the heart to display itself in figurative language, and in similes:

Troilus.

• Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne’s love,
• What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we?
• Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl:
• Between our Ilium, and where she resides,
• Let it be call’d the wild and wandering flood;
• Ourself the merchant; and this sailing Pandar
• Our doubtful hope, our convoy, and our bark.

• Troilus and Cressid, act 1. sc. 1.

Again:

• Come, gentle Night; come, loving black-brow’d Night!
• Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
• Take him, and cut him out in little stars,
• And he will make the face of Heav’n so fine,
• That all the world shall be in love with Night,
• And pay no worship to the garish Sun.

• Romeo and Juliet, act 3. sc. 4.19

The dread of a misfortune, however imminent, involving always some doubt and uncertainty, agitates the mind, and excites the imagination:

Wolsey.

• ——— Nay, then, farewell;
• I’ve touch’d the highest point of all my greatness,
• And from that full meridian of my glory<206>
• I haste now to my setting. I shall fall,
• Like a bright exhalation in the evening,
• And no man see me more.

• Henry VIII. act 3. sc. 4.20

But it will be a better illustration of the present head, to give examples where comparisons are improperly introduced. I have had already occasion to observe, that similes are not the language of a man in his ordinary state of mind, dispatching his daily and usual work. For that reason, the following speech of a gardener to his servants, is extremely improper:

• Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricots,
• Which, like unruly children, make their sire
• Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight:
• Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
• Go thou; and, like an executioner,
• Cut off the heads of too-fast-growing sprays,
• That look too lofty in our commonwealth;
• All must be even in our government.

• Richard II. act 3. sc. 7.21

The fertility of Shakespear’s vein betrays him frequently into this error. There is the same impropriety in another simile of his:

Hero.

• Good Margaret, run thee into the parlour;
• There shalt thou find my cousin Beatrice;
• Whisper her ear, and tell her, I and Ursula
• Walk in the orchard, and our whole discourse
• Is all of her; say, that thou overheard’st us:<207>
• And bid her steal into the pleached bower,
• Where honeysuckles, ripen’d by the sun,
• Forbid the sun to enter; like to favourites,
• Made proud by princes, that advance their pride
• Against that power that bred it.

• Much ado about Nothing, act 3. sc. 1.

Rooted grief, deep anguish, terror, remorse, despair, and all the severe dispiriting passions, are declared enemies, perhaps not to figurative language in general, but undoubtedly to the pomp and solemnity of comparison. Upon that account, the simile pronounced by young Rutland, under terror of death from an inveterate enemy, and praying mercy, is unnatural:

• So looks the pent-up lion o’er the wretch
• That trembles under his devouring paws;
• And so he walks insulting o’er his prey,
• And so he comes to rend his limbs asunder.
• Ah, gentle Clifford, kill me with thy sword,
• And not with such a cruel threat’ning look.

• Third part Henry VI. act 1. sc. 5.22

Nothing appears more out of place, nor more aukwardly introduced, than the following simile:

Lucia.

• ——— Farewell, my Portius,
• Farewell, though death is in the word, for-ever!

Portius.

Stay, Lucia, stay; what dost thou say? for-ever?

Lucia.

• Have I not sworn? If, Portius, thy success
• Must throw thy brother on his fate, farewell,<208>
• Oh, how shall I repeat the word, for-ever!

Portius.

• Thus, o’er the dying lamp th’ unsteady flame
• Hangs quivering on a point, leaps off by fits,
• And falls again, as loath to quit its hold.*
• — Thou must not go, my soul still hovers o’er thee,
• And can’t get loose.

• Cato, act 3. sc. 2.23

Nor doth the simile which closes the first act of the same tragedy make a better appearance; the situation there represented being too dispiriting for a simile. A simile is improper for one who dreads the discovery of a secret machination:

Zara.

• The mute not yet return’d! Ha! ’twas the King,
• The King that parted hence! frowning he went;
• His eyes like meteors roll’d, then darted down
• Their red and angry beams; as if his sight
• Would, like the raging Dog-star, scorch the earth,
• And kindle ruin in its course.

• Mourning Bride, act 5. sc. 3.

A man spent and dispirited after losing a battle, is not disposed to heighten or illustrate his discourse by similes:

York.

• With this we charg’d again; but out, alas!
• We bodg’d again; as I have seen a swan
• With bootless labour swim against the tide,<209>
• And spend her strength with over-matching waves.
• Ah! hark, the fatal followers do pursue;
• And I am faint and cannot fly their fury.
• The sands are number’d that make up my life;
• Here must I stay, and here my life must end.

• Third part Henry VI. act 1. sc. 6.24

Far less is a man disposed to similes who is not only defeated in a pitch’d battle, but lies at the point of death mortally wounded:

Warwick.

• ——— My mingled body shows,
• My blood, my want of strength, my sick heart shows,
• That I must yield my body to the earth,
• And, by my fall, the conquest to my foe.
• Thus yields the cedar to the ax’s edge,
• Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle;
• Under whose shade the ramping lion slept,
• Whose top-branch overpeer’d Jove’s spreading tree,
• And kept low shrubs from winter’s pow’rful wind.

• Third part Henry VI. act 5. sc. 3.25

Queen Katharine, deserted by the King, and in the deepest affliction on her divorce, could not be disposed to any sallies of imagination: and for that reason, the following simile, however beautiful in the mouth of a spectator, is scarce proper in her own:

• I am the most unhappy woman living,
• Shipwreck’d upon a kingdom, where no pity,<210>
• No friends, no hope! no kindred weep for me!
• Almost no grave allow’d me! like the lily,
• That once was mistress of the field, and flourish’d,
• I’ll hang my head, and perish.

• King Henry VIII. act 3. sc. 1.26

Similes thus unseasonably introduced, are finely ridiculed in the Rehearsal.

Bayes.

Now here she must make a simile.

Smith.

Where’s the necessity of that, Mr. Bayes?

Bayes.

• Because she’s surprised; that’s a general rule;
• You must ever make a simile when you are surprised;
• ’Tis a new way of writing.

A comparison is not always faultless even where it is properly introduced. I have endeavoured above to give a general view of the different ends to which a comparison may contribute: a comparison, like other human productions, may fall short of its aim; of which defect instances are not rare even among good writers; and to complete the present subject, it will be necessary to make some observations upon such faulty comparisons. I begin with observing, that nothing can be more erroneous than to institute a comparison too faint: a distant resemblance or contrast fatigues the mind with its obscurity, instead of amusing it; and tends not to fulfil any one end of a comparison. The following similes seem to labour under this defect.<211>

• Albus ut obscuro deterget nubila coelo
• Saepe Notus, neque parturit imbres
• Perpetuos: sic tu sapiens finire memento
• Tristitiam, vitaeque labores,
• Molli, Plance, mero.

• Horat. Carm. l. 1. ode 7.27

• ——— 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.

• Aeneid. ix. 28.28

• Talibus orabat, talisque miserrima fletus
• Fertque refertque soror: sed nullis ille movetur
• Fletibus, aut voces ullas tractabilis audit.
• Fata obstant: placidasque viri Deus obstruit auris.
• Ac veluti annoso validam cum robore quercum
• Alpini Boreae, nunc hinc, nunc flatibus illinc
• Eruere inter se certant; it stridor, et alte
• Consternunt terram concusso stipite frondes:
• Ipsa haeret scopulis: et quantum vertice ad auras
• Aethereas, tantum radice in Tartara tendit.
• Haud secus assiduis hinc atque hinc vocibus heros
• Tunditur, et magno persentit pectore curas:
• Mens immota manet, lacrymae volvuntur inanes.

• Aeneid. iv. 437.29

K. Rich.

• Give me the crown.—Here, Cousin, seize the crown,
• Here, on this side, my hand; on that side, thine.
• Now is this golden crown like a deep well,
• That owes two buckets, filling one another;<212>
• The emptier ever dancing in the air,
• The other down, unseen and full of water:
• That bucket down, and full of tears, am I,
• Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.

• Richard II. act 4. sc. 3.30

King John.

• Oh! Cousin, thou art come to set mine eye;
• The tackle of my heart is crack’d and burnt;
• And all the shrowds wherewith my life should fail,
• Are turned to one thread, one little hair:
• My heart hath one poor string to stay it by,
• Which holds but till thy news be uttered.

• King John, act. 5. sc. 10.31

York.

• My uncles both are slain in rescuing me:
• And all my followers, to the eager foe
• Turn back, and fly like ships before the wind,
• Or lambs pursu’d by hunger-starved wolves.

• Third part Henry VI. act 1. sc. 6.32

The latter of the two similes is good: the former, by its faintness of resemblance, has no effect but to load the narration with an useless image.

The next error I shall mention is a capital one. In an epic poem, or in a poem upon any elevated subject, a writer ought to avoid raising a simile on a low image, which never fails to bring down the principal subject. In general, it is a rule, That a grand object ought never to be resembled to one<213> that is diminutive, however delicate the resemblance may be: for it is the peculiar character of a grand object to fix the attention, and swell the mind; in which state, to contract it to a minute object, is unpleasant. The resembling an object to one that is greater, has, on the contrary, a good effect, by raising or swelling the mind: for one passes with satisfaction from a small to a great object; but cannot be drawn down, without reluctance, from great to small. Hence the following similes are faulty.

• Meanwhile the troops beneath Patroclus’ care,
• Invade the Trojans, and commence the war.
• As wasps, provok’d by children in their play,
• Pour from their mansions by the broad highway,
• In swarms the guiltless traveller engage,
• Whet all their stings, and call forth all their rage;
• All rise in arms, and with a general cry
• Assert their waxen domes, and buzzing progeny:
• Thus from the tents the fervent legion swarms,
• So loud their clamours, and so keen their arms.

• Iliad xvi. 312.

• So burns the vengeful hornet (soul all o’er)
• Repuls’d in vain, and thirsty still of gore;
• (Bold son of air and heat) on angry wings
• Untam’d, untir’d, he turns, attacks and stings.
• Fir’d with like ardour fierce Atrides flew,
• And sent his soul with ev’ry lance he threw.

• Iliad xvii. 642.<214>

• Instant ardentes Tyrii: pars ducere muros,
• Molirique arcem, et manibus subvolvere saxa;
• Pars aptare locum tecto, et concludere sulco.
• Jura magistratusque legunt, sanctumque senatum.
• Hic portus alii effodiunt: hic alta theatris
• Fundamenta locant alii, immanesque columnas
• Rupibus excidunt, scenis decora alta futuris.
• Qualis apes aestate nova per florea rura
• Exercet sub sole labor, cum gentis adultos
• Educunt foetus, aut cum liquentia mella
• Stipant, et dulci distendunt nectare cellas,
• Aut onera accipiunt venientum, aut agmine facto
• Ignavum fucos pecus a praesepibus arcent.
• Fervet opus, redolentque thymo fragrantia mella.

• Aeneid. i. 427.33

To describe bees gathering honey as resembling the builders of Carthage, would have a much better effect.*

• Tum vero Teucri incumbunt, et littore celsas
• Deducunt toto naves: natat uncta carina;
• Frondentesque ferunt remos, et robora sylvis
• Infabricata, fugae studio.
• Migrantes cernas, totaque ex urbe ruentes.
• Ac veluti ingentem formicae farris acervum
• Cum populant, hyemis memores, tectoque reponunt:
• It nigrum campis agmen, praedamque per herbas
• Convectant calle angusto: pars grandia trudunt<215>
• Obnixae frumenta humeris: pars agmina cogunt,
• Castigantque moras: opere omnis semita fervet.

• Aeneid. iv. 397.34

The following simile has not any one beauty to recommend it. The subject is Amata, the wife of King Latinus.

• Tum vero infelix, ingentibus excita monstris,
• Immensam sine more furit lymphata per urbem:
• Ceu quondam torto volitans sub verbere turbo,
• Quem pueri magno in gyro vacua atria circum
• Intenti ludo exercent. Ille actus habena
• Curvatis fertur spatiis: stupet inscia turba,
• Impubesque manus, mirata volubile buxum;
• Dant animos plagae. Non cursu segnior illo
• Per medias urbes agitur, populosque feroces.

• Aeneid. vii. 376.35

This simile seems to border upon the burlesque.

An error opposite to the former, is the introducing a resembling image, so elevated or great as to bear no proportion to the principal subject. Their remarkable disparity, seizing the mind, never fails to depress the principal subject by contrast, instead of raising it by resemblance: and if the disparity be very great, the simile degenerates into burlesque; nothing being more ridiculous than to force an object out of its proper rank in nature, by equalling it with one greatly superior or great-<216>ly inferior. This will be evident from the following comparisons.

• Fervet opus, redolentque thymo fragrantia mella,
• Ac veluti lentis Cyclopes fulmina massis
• Cum properant: alii taurinis follibus auras
• Accipiunt, redduntque: alii stridentia tingunt
• Aera lacu: gemit impositis incudibus Aetna:
• Illi inter sese magna vi brachia tollunt
• In numerum; versantque tenaci forcipe ferrum.
• Non aliter (si parva licet componere magnis)
• Cecropias innatus apes amor urget habendi,
• Munere quamque suo. Grandaevis oppida curae,
• Et munire favos, et Daedala fingere tecta.
• At fessae multâ referunt se nocte minores,
• Crura thymo plenae: pascuntur et arbuta passim,
• Et glaucas salices, casiamque crocumque rubentem,
• Et pinguem tiliam, et ferrugineos hyacinthos.
• Omnibus una quies operum, labor omnibus unus.

• Georgics, iv. 169.36

The Cyclopes make a better figure in the following simile:

• ——— The Thracian leader prest,
• With eager courage, far before the rest;
• Him Ajax met, inflam’d with equal rage:
• Between the wond’ring hosts the chiefs engage;
• Their weighty weapons round their heads they throw,
• And swift, and heavy, falls each thund’ring blow.
• As when in Aetna’s caves the giant brood,
• The one-ey’d servants of the Lemnian god,
• In order round the burning anvil stand,
• And forge, with weighty strokes, the forked brand;<217>
• The shaking hills their fervid toils confess,
• And echoes rattling through each dark recess:
• So rag’d the fight.

• Epigoniad, b. 8.

• Tum Bitian ardentem oculis animisque frementem;
• Non jaculo, neque enim jaculo vitam ille dedisset;
• Sed magnum stridens contorta falarica venit
• Fulminis acta modo, quam nec duo taurea terga,
• Nec duplici squama lorica fidelis et auro
• Sustinuit: collapsa ruunt immania membra:
• Dat tellus gemitum, et clypeum super intonat ingens.
• Qualis in Euboico Baiarum littore quondam
• Saxea pila cadit, magnis quam molibus ante
• Constructam jaciunt ponto: sic illa ruinam
• Prona trahit, penitusque vadis illisa recumbit:
• Miscent se maria, et nigrae attolluntur arenae:
• Tum sonitu Prochyta alta tremit, durumque cubile
• Inarime Jovis imperiis imposta Typhoëo.

• Aeneid. ix. 703.37

• Loud as a bull makes hill and valley ring,
• So roar’d the lock when it releas’d the spring.

• Odyssey, xxi. 51.

Such a simile upon the simplest of all actions, that of opening a door, is pure burlesque.

A writer of delicacy will avoid drawing his comparisons from any image that is nauseous, ugly, or remarkably disagreeable: for however strong the resemblance may be, more will be lost than gained<218> by such comparison. Therefore I cannot help condemning, though with some reluctance, the following simile, or rather metaphor.

• O thou fond many! with what loud applause
• Did’st thou beat heav’n with blessing Bolingbroke
• Before he was what thou wou’dst have him be?
• And now being trimm’d up in thine own desires,
• Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him,
• That thou provok’st thyself to cast him up.
• And so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge
• Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard,
• And now thou wou’st eat thy dead vomit up,
• And howl’st to find it.

• Second part, Henry IV. act 1. sc. 6.38

The strongest objection that can lie against a comparison is, that it consists in words only, not in sense. Such false coin, or bastard wit, does extremely well in burlesque; but is far below the dignity of the epic, or of any serious composition:

• The noble sister of Poplicola,
• The moon of Rome; chaste as the isicle
• That’s curled by the frost from purest snow,
• And hangs on Dian’s temple.

• Coriolanus, act 5. sc. 3.39

There is evidently no resemblance between an isicle and a woman, chaste or unchaste: but chastity is cold in a metaphorical sense, and an isicle is cold in a proper sense: and this verbal resem-<219>blance, in the hurry and glow of composing, has been thought a sufficient foundation for the simile. Such phantom similes are mere witticisms, which ought to have noquarter, except where purposely introduced to provoke laughter. Lucian, in his dissertation upon history, talking of a certain author, makes the following comparison, which is verbal merely:

Virgil has not escaped this puerility:

• ——— Galathaea thymo mihi dulcior Hyblae.

• Bucol. vii. 37.

• ——— Ego Sardois videar tibi amarior herbis.

• Ibid. 41.

• Gallo, cujus amor tantum mihi crescit in horas,
• Quantum vere novo viridis se subjicit alnus.

• Bucol. x. 37.40

Nor Tasso, in his Aminta:

• Picciola e’ l’ ape, e fa col picciol morso
• Pur gravi, e pur moleste le ferite;
• Ma, qual cosa é più picciola d’amore,
• Se in ogni breve spatio entra, e s’ asconde
• In ogni breve spatio? hor, sotto a l’ombra
• De le palpebre, hor trà minuti rivi
• D’un biondo crine, hor dentro le pozzette
• Che forma un dolce riso in bella guancia;<220>
• E pur fa tanto grandi, e si mortali,
• E cosi immedicabili le piaghe.

• Act 2. sc. 1.41

Nor Boileau, the chastest of all writers; and that even in his art of poetry:

• Ainsi tel autrefois, qu’on vit avec Faret
• Charbonner de ses vers les murs d’un cabaret,
• S’en va mal à propos d’une voix insolente,
• Chanter du peuple Hébreu la suite triomphante,
• Et poursuivant Moise au travers des déserts,
• Court avec Pharaon se noyer dans les mers.

• Chant. 1. l. 21.42

• Mais allons voir le Vrai jusqu’en sa source même.
• Un dévot aux yeux creux, et d’abstinence blême,
• S’il n’a point le cœur juste, est affreux devant Dieu.
• L’Evangile au Chrêtien ne dit, en aucun lieu,
• Sois dévot: elle dit, Sois doux, simple, equitable;
• Car d’un dévot souvent au Chrêtien veritable
• La distance est deux fois plus longue, à mon avis,
• Que du Pôle Antarctique au Détroit de Davis.

• Boileau, Satire 11.43

• ——— But for their spirits and souls
• This word rebellion had froze them up
• As fish are in a pond.

• Second part Henry IV. act 1. sc. 3.44

Queen.

• The pretty vaulting sea refus’d to drown me;
• Knowing, that thou wou’dst have me drown’d on shore,
• With tears as salt as sea, through thy unkindness.

• Second part Henry VI. act 3. sc. 6.45 <221>

Here there is no manner of resemblance but in the word drown; for there is no real resemblance between being drown’d at sea, and dying of grief at land. But perhaps this sort of tinsel wit may have a propriety in it, when used to express an affected, not a real passion, which was the Queen’s case.

Pope has several similes of the same stamp. I shall transcribe one or two from the Essay on Man, the gravest and most instructive of all his performances:

• And hence one master passion in the breast,
• Like Aaron’s serpent, swallows up the rest.

• Epist. 2. l. 131.

And again, talking of this same ruling or master passion:

• Nature its mother, Habit is its nurse;
• Wit, spirit, faculties, but make it worse;
• Reason itself but gives it edge and pow’r;
• As heav’n’s bless’d beam turns vinegar more sour.

• Ibid. l. 145.

Lord Bolingbroke, speaking of historians:

Let us vary the phrase a very little, and there will not remain a shadow of resemblance. Thus,

Racine makes Pyrrhus say to Andromaque,

• Vaincu, chargé de fers, de regrets consumé,
• Brulé de plus de feux que je n’en allumai,
• Helas! fus-je jamais si cruel que vous l’êtes?46

And Orestes in the same strain:

Similes of this kind put one in mind of a ludicrous French song:

• Je croyois Janneton
• Aussi douce que belle:
• Je croyois Janneton
• Plus douce qu’un mouton;
• Helas! helas!
• Elle est cent fois, mille fois, plus cruelle
• Que n’est le tigre aux bois.48

Again:

• Helas! l’amour m’a pris,
• Comme le chat fait la souris.49 <223>

A vulgar Irish ballad begins thus:

• I have as much love in store
• As there’s apples in Portmore.

Where the subject is burlesque or ludicrous, such similes are far from being improper. Horace says pleasantly,

And Shakespear,

And this leads me to observe, that beside the foregoing comparisons, which are all serious, there is a species, the end and purpose of which is to excite gaiety or mirth. Take the following examples.

• This sword a dagger had his page,
• That was but little for his age;
• And therefore waited on him so,
• As dwarfs upon knights-errant do.

• Hudibras, canto 1.

Description of Hudibras’s horse:

• He was well stay’d, and in his gait
• Preserv’d a grave, majestic state.
• At spur or switch no more he skipt,
• Or mended pace, than Spaniard whipt:
• And yet so fiery, he would bound
• As if he griev’d to touch the ground:
• That Caesar’s horse, who, as fame goes,
• Had corns upon his feet and toes,
• Was not by half so tender hooft,
• Nor trod upon the ground so soft.
• And as that beast would kneel and stoop,
• (Some write) to take his rider up;
• So Hubibras his (’tis well known)
• Would often do to set him down.

• Canto 1.

• Honour is, like a widow, won
• With brisk attempt and putting on,
• With entering manfully, and urging;
• Not slow approaches, like a virgin.

• Canto 1.

• The sun had long since in the lap
• Of Thetis taken out his nap;<225>
• And, like a lobster boil’d, the morn
• From black to red began to turn.

• Part 2. canto 2.

• Box’d in a chair, the beau impatient sits,
• While spouts run clatt’ring o’er the roof by fits;
• And ever and anon with frightful din
• The leather sounds; he trembles from within.
• So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed,
• Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed,
• (Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do,
• Instead of paying chairmen, run them through),<226>
• Laocoon struck the outside with his spear,
• And each imprison’d hero quak’d for fear.

• Description of a City Shower. Swift.

• Clubs, diamonds, hearts, in wild disorder seen,
• With throngs promiscuous strow the level green.
• Thus when dispers’d a routed army runs,
• Of Asia’s troops, and Afric’s sable sons,
• With like confusion, different nations fly,
• Of various habit, and of various dye,
• The pierc’d battalions disunited, fall
• In heaps on heaps; one fate o’erwhelms them all.

• Rape of the Lock, canto 3.

Lady Easy.

My dear, I am afraid you have provoked her a little too far.

Sir Charles.

O! Not at all. You shall see, I’ll sweeten her, and she’ll cool like a dish of tea.

Ibid.<227>

[* ]Chap. 8.

[1. ]Kames added several additional quotations to the text after the first edition, most conspicuously from James Macpherson’s Fingal.

[2. ]Paradise Lost, I.625.

[3. ]Read “weaken’d” for “weak”; “lion dying” for “lion,” and last line:

• And fawn on rage with base humility
• Which art a lion and a king of beasts?

[* ]p. 86.

[* ]The nature and merit of Ossian’s comparisons is fully illustrated, in a dissertation on the poems of that author, by Dr. Blair, professor of rhetoric in the college of Edinburgh; a delicious morsel of criticism. [Hugh Blair, A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian, the Son of Fingal, 1763.]

[4. ]Act 3, sc. 4. Read opening lines as:

• . . . and Bolingbroke
• Hath seiz’d the wasteful king. O! what pity is it
• That he hath not so trimm’d and dress’d his land
• As we this garden. We at time of year
• Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees . . .

Delete “All” and “and” in lines 9 and 12.

[5. ]Henry VI, Part 3, act 2, sc. 1.

[6. ]Edmund Waller, “The Night-piece or a Picture Drawn in the Dark.”

[7. ]Catullus, Carmen nuptiale, LX. 39–47:

• When withdrawn in some walled garden A
• rose blooms
• Safe from the farm plough
• From farm beasts
• Strong under the sun
• Fresh in light free air
• Sprouting in rain showers
• That rose is beauty’s paragon for man or woman’s pleasure,
• But once the bud has blown
• —when the thin stalk is left
• no paragon remains for man or woman’s pleasure:
• so, intact
• a girl stays treasured of her sex
• but let her lose her maidenhead
• her close petals once polluted
• she cannot give the same delight again to men
• no longer be the cynosure of virgins
• Hymen Hymenaeus attend O Hymen!
• (trans. Peter Whigham)

Kames departs from standard eighteenth-century texts: for “contusus” read “convulvus”; for both occurrences of “cupiere” read “optavere”; for “suis; sed” read “suis est;”. Kames omits the last line: “Hymen o Hymenaee, Hymen ades o Hymenaee.”

[* ]Dunciad, b. 4. l. 405.

[8. ]Act 2, sc. 7.

[9. ]Act 2, sc. 4.

[10. ]Act 5, sc. 2. Kames omits ten lines prior to the speech of the duchess.

[11. ]Act 1, sc. 1.

[12. ]Act 3, sc. 2: read “lade” for “lave” in line 6, and read last line as “Flatt’ring me with impossibilities.”

[13. ]Act 4, sc. 2.

[* ]Book 2. l. 111.

[† ]Book 2. l. 551.

[* ]See Vidae Poetic. lib. 2. l. 282.

[14. ]Act 2, sc. 1.

[15. ]Act 3, sc. 3.

[* ]See chap. 4.

[16. ]Lucan 1.128: “for, if the victor had the gods on his side, the vanquished had Cato.”

[* ]Beginning of book 3.

[* ]Book 4. l. 498.

[† ]Guardian, No. 153.

[17. ]Ants.

[18. ]Famiano Strada (1572–1649), De bello Belgico decas prima, 1632 (translated into English as The History of the Low-Countrey Warres, 1650). “I am not ignorant of the fact that great schemes are effected by many causes, just as large ships are impelled along by many oars.”

[‡ ]It is accordingly observed by Longinus, in his Treatise of the Sublime, that the proper time for metaphor, is when the passions are so swelled as to hurry on like a torrent.

[19. ]Act 3, sc. 2.

[20. ]Act 3, sc. 2.

[21. ]Act 3, sc. 4.

[22. ]Act 1, sc. 3.

[* ]This simile would have a fine effect pronounced by the chorus in a Greek tragedy.

[23. ]Joseph Addison, 1713.

[24. ]Act 1, sc. 4.

[25. ]Act 5, sc. 2: read “mangled” for “mingled.”

[26. ]Read first three lines as:

• I am the most unhappy woman living,
• Alas! Poor wenches, where are now your fortunes?
• Shipwreck’d upon a kingdom, where no pity . . .

[27. ]“As Notus is oft a clearing wind and dispels the clouds from darkened skies nor breeds perpetual showers, so do thou, O Plancus, remember wisely to end life’s gloom and troubles with mellow wine.”

[28. ]“Turnus their captain in the centre of the line:—even as Ganges, rising high in silence with his seven peaceful streams, or Nile, when his rich flood ebbs from the fields, and at length he is sunk into his channel.”

[29. ]“Such was her prayer and such the tearful pleas the unhappy sister bears again and again. But by no tearful pleas is he moved, nor in yielding mood pays he heed to any words. Fate withstands and heaven seals his kindly, mortal ears. Even as when northern Alpine winds, blowing now hence, now thence, emulously strive to uproot an oak strong with the strength of years, there comes a roar, the stem quivers and the high leafage thickly strews the ground, but the oak clings to the crag, and as far it strikes its roots down towards hell—even so with ceaseless appeals, from this and from that, the hero is buffeted, and in his mighty heart feels the thrill of grief: steadfast stands his will; the tears fall in vain.”

[30. ]Act 4, sc. 1.

[31. ]Act 5, sc. 7.

[32. ]Act 1, sc. 4.

[33. ]“Eagerly the Tyrians press on, some to build walls, to rear the citadel, and roll up stones by hand; some to choose the site for a dwelling and enclose it with a furrow. Laws and magistrates they ordain, and a holy senate. Here some are digging harbours, here others lay the deep foundations of their theatre and hew out of the cliffs vast columns, lofty adornments for the stage to be! Even as bees in early summer, amid flowery fields, ply their task in sunshine, when they lead forth the full-grown young of their race, or pack the fluid honey and strain their cells to bursting with sweet nectar, or receive the burdens of incomers, or in martial array drive from their folds the drones, a lazy herd; all aglow is the work and the fragrant honey is sweet with thyme.” Read “Theatri” for “theatris”; “augmine” for “agmine.”

[* ]And accordingly Demetrius Phalereus (of Elocution, sect. 85.) observes, that it has a better effect to compare small things to great than great things to small.

[34. ]“Then, indeed, the Teucrians fall to and all along the shore launch their tall ships. The keels, well-pitched, are set afloat; the sailors, eager for flight, bring from the woods leafy boughs for oars and logs unhewn. One could see them moving away and streaming forth from all the city. Even as when ants, mindful of winter, plunder a huge hap of corn and store it in their home; over the plain moves a black column, and through the grass they carry the spoil on a narrow track, some strain with their shoulders and heave on the huge grains, some close up the ranks and rebuke delay; all the path is aglow with work.” Read “navis,” “Frondetisque,” “ruentis.”

[35. ]“Then, indeed, the luckless queen, stung by monstrous horrors, in wild frenzy rages from end to end of the city. As at times a top, spinning under the twisted lash, which boys intent on the game drive in a great circle through an empty court—urged by the whip it speeds on round after round; the puzzled, childish throng hang over it in wonder, marvelling at the whirling box-wood; the blows give it life: so, with course no slacker, is she driven through the midst of cities and proud peoples.”

[36. ]“All aglow is the work, and the fragrant honey is sweet with thyme. And as, when the Cyclopes in haste forge bolts from tough ore, some with ox-hide bellows make the blasts come and go, others dip the hissing brass in the lake, while Aetna groans under the anvils laid upon her; they, with mighty force, now one, now another, raise their arms in measured cadence, and turn the iron with gripping tongs—even so, if we may compare small things with great, an inborn love of gain spurs on the Attic bees, each after its own office. The aged have charge of the towns, the building of the hives, the fashioning of the cunningly wrought houses. But the young betake them home in weariness, late at night, their thighs freighted with thyme; far and wide they feed on arbutus, on pale-green willows, on cassia and ruddy crocus, on the rich linden, and the dusky hyacinth. All have one season to rest from labour, all one season to toil.”

[37. ]“Then Bitias falls, fire in his eyes and rage in his hearts, yet not under a javelin— for not to a javelin had he given his life—but with a mighty hiss a whirled pike sped, driven by a thunderbolt. This not two bulls’ hides, nor the trusty corslet with double scales of gold could withstand. The giant limbs totter and fall; earth groans, and the huge shield thunders over him. So on Euboic shore of Baiae falls at times a rocky mass, which, builded first of mighty blocks, men cast into the sea; so as it falls, it trails havoc, and crashing into the waters finds rest in the depths; the seas are in turmoil and the black sands mount upwards; then at the sound lofty Prochyta trembles, and Inarime’s rugged bed, laid by Jove’s command above Typhoeus.”

[38. ]Act 1, sc. 3.

[39. ]Read “Publicola” for “Poplicola,” “curdied” for “curled.”

[40. ]Bucolics 7.37, 41; X.37 (Dryden translations):

• • Fair Galatea, with silver Feet,
  • O, whiter than the Swan, and more than Hybla sweet
• • . . . deform’d like him who chaws
  • Sardinian Herbage to contract his Jaws
• • Why, Gallus, this immod’rate Grief, he cry’d:
  • Think’st thou that Love with Tears is satisfy’d?

[41. ]“Small is the bee and yet with its small sting makes the most grievous and troublesome wounds; but what thing is smaller than Love who lurks in the minutest things and hides himself in every little space? Now in the shade of an eyelid, now among the fine threads of golden locks, now within the dimples which a sweet smile forms in lovely cheek, and yet he makes so great, so mortal and incurable wounds.” (Aminta, trans. E. Grillo) Read “ricci” for “rivi.”

[42. ]

• Thus in times past Dubartas vainly Writ,
• Allaying sacred truth with trifling Wit,
• Impertinently, and without delight,
• Describ’d the Ismelites Triumphant Flight,
• And following Moses o’er the Sandy Plain,
• Perish’d with Pharaoh in the Arabian Main.

[43. ]

• But Truth we now will to the Fountain trace,
• And see the Saint with his reserv’d Grimace,
• That look of Abstinence, that holy Leer:
• What is he? Who wou’d thus devout appear,
• To Heav’n how hideous! if he’s not sincere.
• The Gospel nowhere says be Sullen, Sour,
• But bids you to be Simple, Honest, Pure.
• The Man, who is a Christian, seems to me,
• Compar’d with him who so affects to be,
• As distant from each other, as the Poles,
• From Davis Streight to where th’ Antartic Rolls.
• [“A Streight under the Artic-Pole near Nova Zembla.”]
• (The English editor was here mistaken: the Davis Strait separates Greenland from Baffin Island.)

[44. ]Act 1, sc. 1.

[45. ]Act 3, sc. 2.

[46. ]“Defeated, bound with chains, consumed by regret, burned even more by fires that I myself lit. Alas. Was ever I as cruel as you?” (Act 1, sc. 4)

[47. ]“The Scythians are less cruel than Hermione.” (Act 2, sc. 2)

[48. ]Molière, Le bourgeois gentilhomme, Act 1.2.

• I thought Jeanneton
• Fair and sweet to be;
• I thought Jeanneton
• Sweeter than sweet mutton;
• Alas! Alas!
• A hundred thousand times more cruel she
• Than the tigers of the pass.
• (Moliere, Don Juan and Other Plays, trans. George Graveley and Ian Maclean, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968)

[49. ]“Alas! Love has caught me, as the cat catches the mouse.”

[50. ]“though . . . lighter than the cork.”

[51. ]All’s Well That Ends Well. Act 4, sc. 3. Read as: “He professes not keeping of oaths; in breaking ’em he is stronger than Hercules.”

[52. ]Act 1, sc. 2.

[53. ]Act 3, sc. 4.