It is necessary to know about the majestic figure of ivory and gold which the Athenian sculptor wrought, or one misses the meaning of Emerson's couplet,—
Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought.
Shakespeare abounds in examples of this use of allusions to history to produce a clear or vivid impression of some emotion or thought.
I will make a Star-chamber matter of it.
Merry Wives, i. 1.
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.
Merchant of Venice, i. 1.
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 burnt.
2 Henry IV., i. 1.
The reader must know something of the Star-chamber, of the gravity and wisdom of Nestor, of the circumstances of the tragic destruction of Troy, or these passages can have little meaning for him.
Sometimes references of this class are less evident, as where Byron speaks of
The starry Galileo with his woes;
or where Poe finely compresses the whole splendid story of antiquity into a couple of lines:—