In the following passage, the action, with all its material circumstances, is represented so much to the life, that it could not be better conceived by a real spectator; and it is this manner of description which contributes greatly to the sublimity of the passage.
He spake; and to confirm his words, out-flew
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
Of mighty cherubim: the sudden blaze
Far round illumin’d hell: highly they rag’d
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms,
Clash’d on their sounding shields the din of war,
Hurling defiance toward the vault of heav’n.
Milton, b. I.
A passage I am to cite from Shakespear, falls not much short of that now mentioned in particularity of description:
O you hard hearts! you cruel men of Rome!
Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
Have you climb’d up to walls and battlements,
To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
Your infants in your arms; and there have sat
The live-long day with patient expectation
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome.
And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,
That Tyber trembled underneath his banks,
To hear the replication of your sounds,
Made in his concave shores?
Julius Cæsar, act 1, sc. 1.
The Henriade of Voltaire errs greatly against the foregoing rule: every thing is touched in a summary way, without ever descending to the circumstances of an event. This manner is good in a general history, the purpose of which is to record important transactions: but in a fable, which hath a very different aim, it is cold and uninteresting; because it is impracticable to form distinct images of persons or things represented in a manner so superficial.
It is observed above, that every useless circumstance ought to be suppressed. To deal in such circumstances, is a fault, on the one hand, not less to be avoided, than the conciseness for which Voltaire is blamed, on the other. In the Æneid[35], Barce, the nurse of Sichæus, whom we never hear of before or after, is introduced for a purpose not more important than to call Anna to her sister Dido. And that it might not be thought unjust in Dido, even in this trivial incident, to prefer her husband’s nurse before her own, the poet takes care to inform his reader, that Dido’s nurse was dead. To this I must oppose a beautiful passage in the same book, where, after Dido’s last speech, the poet, supposing her dead, hastens to describe the lamentation of her attendants:
Dixerat: atque illam media inter talia ferro
Collapsam aspiciunt comites, ensemque cruore
Spumantem, sparsasque manus. It clamor ad alta
Atria, concussam bacchatur fama per urbem;
Lamentis gemituque et fœmineo ululatu
Tecta fremunt, resonat magnis plangoribus æther.
Lib. 4. l. 663.
As an appendix to the foregoing rule, I add the following observation, That to raise a sudden and strong impression, some single circumstance happily selected, has more power than the most laboured description. Macbeth, mentioning to his lady some voices he heard while he was murdering the King, says,
There’s one did laugh in’s sleep, and one cry’d Murder!
They wak’d each other; and I stood and heard them;
But they did say their prayers, and address them
Again to sleep.