Not only is the comparison defective, but the fundamental idea is unfounded, for though excess of admiration may produce a temporary reaction, the opinion of the world oscillates back to the middle line, and no instance can be quoted of an author who has finally lost his due reputation because he had once been overpraised. Chaucer makes a different use of the image. In his poem the north side of the icy mountain bears the names of the ancients which were safe from injury. The sunny side bears the names of the moderns, and he perhaps intended to intimate his opinion that the reason why their fame was less durable than that of the Greeks and Romans was that they were a more luxurious race, and did not in the same degree "scorn delights, and live laborious days" for the sake of producing immortal works.
For on that other side I sey
Of that hill which northward ley,
How it was written full of names
Of folke, that had afore great fames,
Of olde time, and yet they were
As fresh as men had written hem there
The self day, right or that houre
That I upon hem gan to poure:
But well I wiste what it made;
It was conserved with the shade
(All the writing that I sye)
Of the castle that stoode on high,
And stood eke in so cold a place,
That heate might it not deface.—Pope.
[20] Though a strict verisimilitude be not required in the descriptions of this visionary and allegorical kind of poetry, which admits of every wild object that fancy may present in a dream, and where it is sufficient if the moral meaning atone for the improbability, yet men are naturally so desirous of truth that a reader is generally pleased, in such a case, with some excuse or allusion that seems to reconcile the description to probability and nature. The simile here is of that sort, and renders it not wholly unlikely that a rock of ice should remain for ever by mentioning something like it in our northern regions agreeing with the accounts of our modern travellers.—Pope.
[21] "Mountains propping the sky" was one of those vicious common-places of poetry which falsify natural appearances.
[22] A real lover of painting will not be contented with a single view and examination of this beautiful winter-piece; but will return to it again and again with fresh delight. The images are distinct, and the epithets lively and appropriate, especially the words "pale," "unfelt," "impassive," "incumbent," "gathered."—Warton.
[23] This excellent line was perhaps suggested by a fine couplet in Addison's translation of an extract from Silius Italicus:
Stiff with eternal ice, and hid in snow,
That fell a thousand centuries ago.
[24] Dryden's Hind and Panther:
Eternal house not built with mortal hands.