Till poised 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. xiii. 521.
Lucetta. I do not seek to quench your love's hot fire,
But qualify the fire's extreme rage,

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' enamell'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 II. Sc. 10.

-She never told her love

But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek; she pined in thought
And with a green and yellow melancholy,

She sat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief.

Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 6.

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 cried, God save thee, Bolingbroke.

Dutchess. Alas! poor Richard, where rides he the while?

York. As in a theatre, the eyes of men,

After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him who enters next,

Thinking his prattle to be tedious:

Even so, or with much more contempt, men's eyes

Did scowl on Richard: no man cried, 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 V. Sc. 8.

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 woe-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 Percy's death, ere thou report'st it.

Second Part Henry IV. Act I. Sc. &

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,

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 III. Sc. &

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.

O thou Goddess,

Macbeth, Aet V. Sc. 5.

Thou divine Nature! how thyself thou blazon'st
In these two princely boys! they are as gentle
As zeyhyrs blowing below the violet,

Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough,
(Their royal blood inchafed) as the rudest wind,
That by the top doth take the mountain pine,
And make him stoop to the vale.

Cymbeline, Act IV. Sc. 4.

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.

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 iii. st. 4. The fury of Rinaldo subsiding when not opposed, to that of wind or water when it has a free

canto xx. st. 58.

passage,

499. As words convey but a faint and obscure notion of great numbers, a poet, 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 (book ii. 1. 111) compares the Grecian army in point of number to a swarm of bees: in another passage (book ii. 1. 551) 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,
Waved round the coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That o'er the realm of impious Pharao hung
fike night, and darken'd all the land of Nile:
No numberless were those bad angels seen,

Hovering on wing under the cope of hell,

Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires.-Paradise Lost, B. i.

498 Second good effect of a comparison. Examples.

Such comparisons have, by some writers, been 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 raged 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 friend. 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 II. Sc. 8.

500. 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, besides a separate effect: they diversify the narration by new images that are not strictly necessary to the comparison: they are short episodes, which, without drawing us from the principal subject, afford great delight by their beauty and variety:

He scarce had ceased, 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 evening from the top of Fesolé,

Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,

Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.-Milton, b. i.

Dis.odging from a region scarce of prey

To gorge the flesh of lambs, or yeanling kids,

On hills where flocks are fed, fly towards the springs
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 wagons light:

So on this windy sea of land, the fiend

Walk'd up and down alone, bent on his prey.-Milton, b. i.
-Yet higher than their tops

The verdurous wall of Paradise up sprung:
Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into this nether empire neighboring 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 enamell'd colors mix'd,
On which the sun more glad impress'd his beams
Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow,

When God had shower'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 odor from the spicy shore

Of Araby the blest; with such delay

Well pleased, they slack their course, and many a league,
Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles.

Milton, b. 1v. 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.

501. 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 deluged with the sanguine showers.

Iliad, xx. 569.

500. How Milton often embellishes the principal subject. The separate effect of such similes.

1

Thro gh blood, through death, Achilles still proceeds
O'er slaughter'd heroes, and o'er rolling steeds.
As when avenging flames with fury driven
On guilty towns exert the wrath of Heaven,
The pale inhabitants, some fall, some fly,
And the red vapors purple all the sky:

So raged 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 thundering shock,
At meeting, tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven."

Richard II. Act III. Sc. 5.

As rusheth a foamy stream from the dark shady steep of Cromla, when thunder is rolling above, and dark brown night rests on the hill: so fierce, so vast, so terrible, rush forward the sons of Erin. The chief, like a whale of Ocean followed by all its billows, pours valor forth as a stream, rolling its might along the shore. Fingal, b. i.

As roll a thousand waves to a rock, so Swaran's host came on; as meets a rock a thousand waves, so Inisfail met Swaran.-Ibid.

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 urged their way;
Fierce they drove on, impatient to destroy;
Troy charged the first, and Hector first of Troy.
As from some mountain's craggy forehead torn,
A rock's round fragment flies with fury borne,
(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, urged amain,
Whirls, leaps, and thunders down, impetuous to the plain:
There stops-So Hector. Their whole force he proved;
Resistless when he raged; and when he stopt, unmoved.
Iliad, xliii. 187.

The image of a falling rock is certainly not elevating (see chapter iv.), 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, though 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. vi

502. A comparison by contrast may contribute to grandeur or

501. Comparisons that aggrandize.