TALBOYS.
But is not the use of State, sir, for City, bold and singular?
NORTH.
It is. For Verse has her own Speech—though Wordsworth denies it in his Preface—and proves it by his Poetry, like his brethren Shakspeare and Milton. The language of Verse is rapid—abrept and abrupt. Horatio wants the notion of Republic; because properly the Republic is high and palmy, and not the wood, stone, and marble. So he manages an expeditious word that shall include both, and strike you at once. The word of a Poet strikes like a flash of lightning—it penetrates—it does not stay to be scanned—"probed, vexed, and criticised,"—it illuminates and is gone. But you must have eyes—and suffer nobody to shut them. I ask, then—Can any lawful, well-behaved Citizen, having weighed all this, and reviewed all these things, again violate the Poesy of the Avonian Swan, and his own muse-enlightened intelligence, by lending hand or tongue to the convicted and condemned Vulgarism?
TALBOYS.
Now, then, and not till now, we Three know the full power of the lines—
"Scilicet et Rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma,
Septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces."
NORTH.
Another word anent Virgil. Mr Alison says—"There is a still more surprising instance of this fault in one of the most pathetic passages of the whole Poem, in the description of the disease among the cattle, which concludes the Third Georgic. The passage is as follows:—
"Ecce autem duro fumans sub vomere Taurus
Concidit, et mixtum spumis vomit ore cruorem
Extremosque ciet gemitus; it tristis arator,
Mœrentem abjungens fraternâ morte juvencum,
Atque opere in medio defixa relinquit aratra."