Quia mihi vehementer hæc videntur misera atque miseranda, idcirca in eos qui ea perficere voluerunt, me severum, vehementemque præbeo. Etenim quæro, si quis paterfamilias, liberis suis a servo interfectis, uxore occisa, incensa domo, supplicium de servo quam acerbissimum sumserit; utrum is clemens ac misericors, an inhumanissimus et crudelissimus esse videatur? Mihi vero importunus ac ferreus, qui non dolore ac cruciatu nocentis, suum dolorem ac cruciatum lenierit.
How awkwardly is the dignified gravity of the original imitated, in the following heavy, formal, and insipid version.
“Now as to me these calamities appear extremely shocking and deplorable: therefore I am extremely keen and rigorous in punishing those who endeavoured to bring them about. For let me put the case, that a master of a family had his children butchered, his wife murdered, his house burnt down by a slave, yet did not inflict the most rigorous of punishments imaginable upon that slave: would such a master appear merciful and compassionate, and not rather a monster of cruelty and inhumanity? To me that man would appear to be of a flinty cruel nature, who should not endeavour to soothe his own anguish and torment by the anguish and torment of its guilty cause.”[35]
Ovid, in describing the fatal storm in which Ceyx perished, says,
Undarum incursa gravis unda, tonitrubus æther
Fluctibus erigitur, cœlumque æquare videtur
Pontus.
An hyperbole, allowable in poetical description; but which Dryden has exaggerated into the most outrageous bombast:
Now waves on waves ascending scale the skies,
And in the fires above the water fries.