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This is very agreeable both as to the Verse and the Sense; for it makes the thing described more immediately present than it would be otherwise. I cannot just now recollect an Example in Milton of this nature, but I remember one in Fairfax, in a Couplet already cited.
"Their jolly Notes they chanted loud and clear,
And horrid Helms high on their Heads they bear.
This is much more lively and peinturesque than if he had writ bore, and you will easily perceive it. It may be said, perhaps, that Fairfax used bear here for the sake of the Verse; let that be allow'd, but then it must be likewise granted, that Virgil uses vindicat instead of vindicavit, for the sake of his Verse, which he would not have done, if it had not been more beautiful than the common Prose way of writing: And as it is an Excellency in Virgil, so it is in Fairfax.
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