"Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge, and tort'ring hour,
The bad affright, afflict the best."
Upon which Wakefield gives us this brilliant criticism:
"'Torturing hour.' There seems to be some little impropriety and incongruity in this. Consistency of figure rather required some material image, like iron scourge and adamantine chain."
Afterwards he seems to speak diffidently of his own judgment, which is rather an unusual thing in Mr. Wakefield. Well would it have been for the reputations of Bentley, Johnson, and Wakefield, that, before improving upon Milton and Gray and Collins, they had remembered the words of a truly great critic, even Horace himself:
"Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus:
Nam neque chorda sonum reddit quem vult manus et mens,
Poscentique gravem persæpe remittit acutum;