Again,
Heav’n first taught letters for some wretch’s aid,
Some banish’d lover, or some captive maid;
They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires;
The virgin’s wish without her fears impart,
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart;
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the pole.
Eloisa to Abelard, l. 51.
These thoughts are pretty; they suit Pope extremely, but not Eloisa.
Satan, enraged by a threatening of the angel Gabriel, answers thus:
Then when I am thy captive talk of chains,
Proud limitary cherub; but ere then
Far heavier load thyself expect to feel
From my prevailing arm, though Heaven’s King
Ride on thy wings, and thou with thy compeers,
Us’d to the yoke, draw’st his triumphant wheels
In progress through the road of heav’n star-pav’d.
Paradise Lost, book 4.
The concluding epithet forms a grand and delightful image, which cannot be the genuine offspring of rage.
Fourth. Sentiments too artificial for a serious passion. I give for the first example a speech of Piercy expiring:
O, Harry, thou hast robb’d me of my growth:
I better brook the loss of brittle life,
Than those proud titles thou hast won of me;
They wound my thoughts, worse than thy sword my flesh.
But thought’s the slave of life, and life time’s fool;
And time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop.
First part, Henry IV. act 5. sc. 9.
Livy inserts the following passage in a plaintive oration of the Locrenses accusing Pleminius the Roman legate of oppression.
“In hoc legato vestro, nec hominis quicquam est, Patres Conscripti, præter figuram et speciem; neque Romani civis, præter habitum vestitumque, et sonum linguæ Latinæ. Pestis et bellua immanis, quales fretum, quondam, quo ab Sicilia dividimur, ad perniciem navigantium circumsedisse, fabulæ ferunt[53].”