Parva metu primo, mox sese attollit in auras,
Ingrediturque solo, et caput inter nubila condit.*

There is another figure of this sort in the Georgics of Virgil, as nobly conceived. Instead of saying that the pestilence among the cattle encreased daily, what an exalted image has he given us!

Sævit et in lucem Stygiis emissa tenebris

Pallida TYSIPHONE. MORBOS agit ante METUMQUE.
Inque dies avidum surgens caput altius effert.

The sybil in the sixth Eneid is likewise represented as spreading to sight, and growing larger and larger as the inspiration came upon her:

Subito non vultus, non color unus,

Non comptæ mansere comæ ; sed pectus anhelum,
Et rabie fera corda tument; majorque videri,
Nec mortale sonans.†

We have still a fourth instance of Virgil's imagination, in the spirited picture he has drawn of the Fury who appears to Turnus in the seventh Æneid.

* Book IV. ver. 176.

† Ver. 47.

Eneid. Turnus, at first, suitably to his character, treats her as an impertinent old priestess, whose habit she had indeed borrowed. Upon which she instantly kindles into rage, assumes her own horrid shape in a moment, the serpents hiss around her head, and her countenance spreads forth in all its terrors:

At juveni oranti subitus tremor occupat artus;
Diriguere oculi; tot Erinnys sibilat hydris,
Tantaque se facies aperit.

In no part of Virgil's writings is there more true spirit and sublimity, than in this interview between Turnus and the Fury, both whose characters are strongly supported. But to return to FAME. Virgil has represented her as a dreadful and gigantic monster, in which conception, though he might have been assisted by the DisCORD of Homer, yet his figure is admirably designed to impress terror. She has innumerable tongues, mouths, eyes and ears; the sound of her wings is heard at the dead of night, as she flies through the middle of the air:

* Ver. 446.

Nocte

In the day-time the 3 vai su battlements, nd so the bga tova, ad uile great cines, vão gaze at her huge and formidable ap pearance:

dropped these striking circumstances in Virgil,

and softened her features:

20. With her the Temple ev'ry moment grew,
And ampler vistas opened to my view:
Upwards the columns shoot, the roofs ascend,
And arches widen, and lag les extend.*

Asos out of the earth a fabric huge
Rose like an exhalation, with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
With golden architrave.f

This

* Ver. 262.

† Par. Lost, b. i. ver. 710.

This circumstance of the temple's enlarging with the growing figure of the goddess, is lively, and well imagined. The reader feels a pleasure in having his eye carried through a length of building, almost to an immensity. Extension is certainly a cause of the sublime. In this view the following passage of Thomson may be considered, where he speaks of a lazar-house in his Castle of Indolence:*

Through the drear caverns stretching many a mile,
The sick uprear'd their heads, and dropp'd their woes awhile.

21. Next these a youthful train their vows express'd,
With feathers crown'd, and gay embroid'ry dress'd :
Hither (they cry'd) direct your eyes, and see
The men of pleasure, dress, and gallantry:
Ours is the place at banquets, balls, and plays;
Sprightly our nights, polite are all our days:
Of unknown duchesses lewd tales we tell;

Yet, would the world believe us, all were well ↑

Strokes of pleasantry and humour, and satirical reflections on the foibles of common life, are surely too familiar, and unsuited to so grave and majestic a poem as this hitherto has appeared to

be.

* Stanza lxix, c. 2.

↑ Ver. 378.

be. Such incongruities offend propriety; though I know ingenious persons have endeavoured to excuse them, by saying, that they add a variety of imagery to the piece. This practice is even defended by a passage in Horace :

Et sermone opus est modo tristi, sæpe jocoso,
Defendente vicem modo rhetoris atque poetæ,
Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque
Extenuantis eas consulto.—

But this judicious remark is, I apprehend, confined to ethic and preceptive kinds of writing, which stand in need of being enlivened with lighter images, and sportive thoughts; and where strictures on common life may more gracefully be inserted. But in the higher kinds of poesy, they appear as unnatural, and out of place, as one of the burlesque scenes of Heemskirk would do in a solemn landscape of Poussin. When I see such a line as

« And at each blast a lady's honour dies,”

in the TEMPLE of FAME, I lament as much to find it placed there, as to see shops, and sheds,

1

and