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The last exertion of courage compared to the blaze of a lamp before extinguishing-Tasso Gierusal., canto

19. st. 22.

None of the foregoing similies, 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 similies 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 of view; which effect is remarkable in the following simile:

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 flight.
Fierce as a whirlwind up the wall he flies,
And fires his host with loud repeated cries.

ILIAD.-BOOK XII. 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 pin'd in thought,

And, with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at Grief.

TWELFTH NIGHT.-ACT II. Sc. 4.

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!

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

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

After a well-grac'd 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. 3.

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-begone,
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. 3.

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. 3.
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 V. 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 enchaf'd) as the rudest wind,
That by the top doth take the mountain pine,
And make him stoop to th' 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 Gierusal., canto 3. st. 4. The fury of Rinaldo subsiding when not opposed, to that of wind or water, when it has a free passageCanto 20. st. 58.

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* compares the Grecian army in point of number to a swarm of bees; in another passaget 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 I.

*Book 2. 1. 111.

† Book 2. I. 551.

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 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 II. Sc. 3.

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. Similies 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 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.-Book I.

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 tower; his form had not yet 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.

As when a vulture on Imaus bred,

MILTON.-BOOK I.

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
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams,

But in his way lights on the barren plains

Of Sericana, where Chineses drive

With sails and winds their cany wagons light:
So on this windy sea of land, the fiend

Walk'd up and down alone, bent on his prey.

Yet higher than their tops

MILTON.-BOOK I.

The verd❜rous wall of paradise up-sprung:
Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neighboring round.
And higher than that wall, a circling row
Of goodliest trees laden 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 odorif'rous 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-pleas'd they slack their course, and many a league
Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles.
MILTON.-BOOK IV.

With regard to similies 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 dis

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