, seems to have had his Eye on the foregoing Rule in the following Verses:
Et Tragicus plerumque dolet Sermone pedestri,
Telephus et Peleus, cum pauper et exul uterque,
Projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba,
Si curat cor Spectantis tetigisse querelâ.
Tragedians too lay by their State, to grieve.
Peleus and Telephus, Exit'd and Poor,
Forget their Swelling and Gigantick Words.
(Ld. Roscommon.)
our Modern
English
Poets, there is none who was better turned for Tragedy than
Lee
; if instead of favouring the Impetuosity of his Genius, he had restrained it, and kept it within its proper Bounds. His Thoughts are wonderfully suited to Tragedy, but frequently lost in such a Cloud of Words, that it is hard to see the Beauty of them: There is an infinite Fire in his Works, but so involved in Smoak, that it does not appear in half its Lustre. He frequently succeeds in the Passionate Parts of the Tragedy, but more particularly where he slackens his Efforts, and eases the Style of those Epithets and Metaphors, in which he so much abounds. What can be more Natural, more Soft, or more Passionate, than that Line in
Statira's