Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 2.djvu/59

 short on the sudden into some Similitude, which diverts, say they, your Attention from the main Subject, and mispends it on some trivial Image. He pours cold water into the Caldron, when his business is to make it boil.

This Accusation is general against all who wou'd be thought Heroick Poets; but I think it touches Virgil less than any. He is too great a Master of his Art, to make a Blot which may so easily be hit. Similitudes, as I have said, are not for Tragedy, which is all violent, and where the Passions are in a perpetual ferment; for there they deaden where they should animate; they are not of the nature of Dialogue, unless in Comedy: A Metaphor is almost all the Stage can suffer, which is a kind of Smilitude comprehended in a word. But this Figure has a contrary effect in Heroick Poetry; there tis employ'd to raise the Admiration, which is. its proper business. And Admiration is not of so violent a nature as Fear or Hope, Compassion or Horrour, or any Concernment we can have for such or such a Person on the Stage. Not but I confess, that Similitudes and Descriptions, when drawn into an unreasonable length, must needs nauseate the Reader. Once I remember, and but once, Virgil makes a Similitude of fourteen Lines; and his description of Fame is about the same number. He is blam'd for both; and I doubt not but he would have contracted them, had he liv'd to have review'd his Work: But Faults are no Precedents. This I have observ'd of his Similitudes in general, that they are not plac'd, as our unobserving Criticks tells us, in the heat of any Action: But commonly in its declining: When he has warm'd us in his Description, as much as possibly he can; then, lest that warmth should languish, he renews it by some apt Similitude, which illustrates his Subject, and yet palls not his Audience. I need give your Lordship but one Ex- Rh