Page:The Works of Abraham Cowley - volume 1 (ed. Aikin) (1806).djvu/94

lxxviii One of the great sources of poetical delight is description, or the power of presenting pictures to the mind. Cowley gives inferences instead of images, and shews not what may be supposed to have been seen, but what thoughts the sight might have suggested. When Virgil describes the stone which Turnus lifted against Æneas, he fixes the attention on its bulk and weight:

Saxum circumspicit ingens, Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis.

Cowley says of the stone with which Cain slew his brother,

I saw him fling the stone, as if he meant At once his murther and his monument.

Of the sword taken from Goliah, he says,

A sword so great, that it was only fit To cut off his great head that came with it.

Other poets describe death by some of its common appearances. Cowley says, with a learned allusion to sepulchral lamps real or fabulous,