[106] Interdum tamen & vocem Comœdia tollit.
Yet Comedy sometimes may raise her Voice. Rosc.
But this Rage of Chremes, which Horace mentions, is not, perhaps, so much an Instance of a Comic Sublime, as of a borrowed Tragic Fury. In relation to Pastoral, if Virgil's fourth Eclogue be objected, I answer, that the Poet himself confesses he leaves his proper Subject for a more lofty one, and begins his Poem with a sort of an Apology for it:
Sicelides Musæ, paulo majora canamus; Non omnes arbusta juvant, humilesque myricæ.
Sicilian Muses, raise a loftier Strain; Not all in Groves and lowly Shrubs delight.
Not that I suppose Pastoral totally to reject the Sublime, as I shall have Occasion to shew more fully hereafter.
For the present, I suppose, it will suffice to produce one or two Instances, out of innumerable, of the Style we are upon. In the second Æneid, Venus, shewing her Son what Gods were united for the Destruction of Troy, gives us this Specimen of it:
[107] Non tibi Tyndaridis facies invisa Lacænæ, Culpatusve Paris; Divûm inclementia, Divûm, Has evertit opes, sternitque à culmine Trojam.
'Tis not Tyndarian Helen's hated Form, Nor much blam'd Paris; Heav'n, inclement Heav'n O'erturns this Realm, and levels tow'ring Troy.
And a little after: