The poplar, plowman, and unfledged, though not essential in the description, are circumstances that tend to make a complete image, and upon that account are an embellishment.
Again,
Hic viridem Æneas frondenti ex ilice metam
Constituit, signum nautis.
Æneid. v. 129.
Horace, addressing to Fortune:
Te pauper ambit sollicita prece
Ruris colonus: te dominam æquoris,
Quicumque Bithynâ lacessit
Carpathium pelagus carinâ.
Carm. lib. 1. ode 35.
—— Illum ex mœnibus hosticis
Matrona bellantis tyranni
Prospiciens, et adulta virgo,
Suspiret: Eheu, ne rudis agminum
Sponsus lacessat regius asperum
Tactu leonem, quem cruenta
Per medias rapit ira cædes.
Carm. lib. 3. ode 2.
Shakespear says[33], “You may as well go about to turn the sun to ice by fanning in his face with a peacock’s feather.” The peacock’s feather, not to mention the beauty of the object, completes the image. An accurate image cannot be formed of this fanciful operation, without conceiving a particular feather; and the mind is at some loss, when this is not specified in the decription. Again, “The rogues slighted me into the river with as little remorse, as they would have drown’d a bitch’s blind puppies, fifteen i’ th’ litter[34].”
Old Lady. You would not be a queen?
Anne. No not for all the riches under heaven.
Old Lady. ’Tis strange: a three-pence bow’d
would hire me, old as I am, to queen it.
Henry VIII. act 2. sc. 5.