Ergo cum primum magnas invecta per urbis
Munificat tacita mortalis muta salute[14].
The undying pain of a great sorrow,—the paralysis of all human effort in the face of new and terrible agencies of death,—the blessedness and pathos of the purest human affections,—the ecstatic delight derived from the revelation of great truths—imprint themselves permanently on the imagination through the august simplicity of the phrases,
Aeternumque daret matri sub pectore volnus[15],—
tacito mussabat medicina timore[16],—
tacita pectus dulcedine tangent[17]—
His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas
Percipit adque horror[18].—
His language has the further power of producing a vague sense of sublimity, where the cause of the feeling is too vast or undefined to be distinctly conceived or visibly presented to the mind. The very sound of his words seems sometimes to be a kind of echo of the voices by which Nature produces a strange awe upon the imagination. Such, for instance, are these lines and phrases—