The description of the tempest in the first book of the "Æneid" is not an amplification; it is a true picture of all that happens in a tempest; there is no idea repeated, and repetition is the vice of all which is merely amplification.
The finest part on the stage in any language is that of Phèdre (Phædra). Nearly all that she says would be tiresome amplification if any other was speaking of Phædra's passion.
Athenes me montra mon superbe ennemie;
Je le vis, je rougis, je plaîs, à sa vue;
Un trouble s'éleva dans mon âme éperdue;
Mes yeux ne voyaient plus, je ne pouvais parler,
Je sentis tout mon corps et transir et brûler;
Je reconnus Venus et ses traits redoubtables,
D'un sang qu'elle poursuit tormens inévitables.
Yes;—Athens showed me my proud enemy;
I saw him—blushed—turned pale;—
A sudden trouble came upon my soul,—
My eyes grew dim—my tongue refused its office,—
I burned—and shivered;—through my trembling frame
Venus in all her dreadful power I felt,
Shooting through every vein a separate pang.
It is quite clear that since Athens showed her her proud enemy Hippolytus, she saw Hippolytus; if she blushed and turned pale, she was doubtless troubled. It would have been a pleonasm, a redundancy, if a stranger had been made to relate the loves of Phædra; but it is Phædra, enamored and ashamed of her passion—her heart is full—everything escapes her:
Ut vidi, lit perii, ut me malus abstulit error.
Je le vis, je rougis, je pâlis, à sa vue.
I saw him—blushed—turned pale.—
What can be a better imitation of Virgil?
Mes yeux ne voyaient plus, je ne pouvais parler;
Je sentis tout mon corps et transir et brûler;
My eyes grew dim—my tongue refused its office;
I burned—and shivered;
What can be a finer imitation of Sappho?
These lines, though imitated, flow as from their first source; each word moves and penetrates the feeling heart; this is not amplification; it is the perfection of nature and of art.
The following is, in my opinion, an instance of amplification, in a modern tragedy, which nevertheless has great beauties. Tydeus is at the court of Argos; he is in love with a sister of Electra; he laments the fall of his friend Orestes and of his father; he is divided betwixt his passion for Electra and his desire of vengeance; while in this state of care and perplexity he gives one of his followers a long description of a tempest, in which he had been shipwrecked some time before.