SECTION I.
Vidi et crudeles dantem Salmonea pœnas
Dum flammas Jovis et sonitus imitatur Olympia, etc.
—VIRGIL, Æneid, b. vi, 1. 585.
Salmoneus suffering cruel pains I found,
For imitating Jove, the rattling sound
Of mimic thunder, and the glittering blaze
Of pointed lightnings and their forked rays.
Those who invented and perfected artillery are so many other Salmoneuses. A cannon-ball of twenty-four pounds can make, and has often made, more ravage than an hundred thunder-claps; yet no cannoneer has ever been struck by Jupiter for imitating that which passes in the atmosphere.
We have seen that Polyphemus, in a piece of Euripides, boasts of making more noise, when he had supped well, than the thunder of Jupiter. Boileau, more honest than Polyphemus, says that another world astonishes him, and that he believes in the immortality of the soul, and that it is God who thunders:
Pour moi, qu'en santé même un autre monde étonne,
Qui crois l'âme immortelle, et que c'est Dieu qui tonne.
—SAT. i, line 161,162.
I know not why he is so astonished at another world, since all antiquity believed in it. Astonish was not the proper word; it was alarm. He believes that it is God who thunders; but he thunders only as he hails, as he rains, and as he produces fine weather—as he operates all, as he performs all. It is not because he is angry that he sends thunder and rain. The ancients paint Jupiter taking thunder, composed of three burning arrows, and hurling it at whomsoever he chose. Sound reason does not agree with these poetical ideas.
Thunder is like everything else, the necessary effect of the laws of nature, prescribed by its author. It is merely a great electrical phenomenon. Franklin forces it to descend tranquilly on the earth; it fell on Professor Richmann as on rocks and churches; and if it struck Ajax Oileus, it was assuredly not because Minerva was irritated against him.
If it had fallen on Cartouche, or the abbé Desfontaines, people would not have failed to say:
"Behold how God punishes thieves and—." But it is a useful prejudice to make the sky fearful to the perverse. Thus all our tragic poets, when they would rhyme to "poudre" or "resoudre," invariably make use of "foudre"; and uniformly make "tonnerre" roll, when they would rhyme to "terre."
Theseus, in "Phèdre," says to his son—act iv, scene 2: