Wakefield in his "Commentary" has a copious passage on this poetical diction. He conceives it to be "an admirable improvement of the Greek and Roman classics:"
——κἑεν αυδἡν: HES. Scut. Her. 396.
——Suaves ex ore loquelas
Funde. LUCRET. i. 40.
This learned editor was little conversant with modern literature, as he proved by his memorable editions of Gray and Pope. The expression is evidently borrowed not from Hesiod, nor from Lucretius, but from a brother at home.
Is it for thee, the Linnet POURS HER THROAT?
Essay on Man, Ep. iii, v. 33.
Gray, in the "Ode to Adversity," addresses the power thus,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose IRON SCOURGE and TORTURING HOUR
The bad affright, afflict the best.
Wakefield censures the expression "torturing hour," by discovering an impropriety and incongruity. He says, "consistency of figure rather required some material image, like iron scourge and adamantine chain." It is curious to observe a verbal critic lecture such a poet as Gray! The poet probably would never have replied, or, in a moment of excessive urbanity, he might have condescended to point out to this minutest of critics the following passage in Milton:—
—— When the SCOURGE
Inexorably, and the TORTURING HOUR
Calls us to penance.
Par. Lost, B. ii. v. 90.
Gray, in his "Ode to Adversity," has
Light THEY DISPERSE, and with them go
The SUMMER FRIEND.