O! Helen sweet, and maist complete, Thy captive cruelly? O! Helen brave! but this I crave, To this Leonine origin may probably be traced the rhyming propensity of many proverbs in prose; as,-Qualis vita finis ita.* An old lawyer of the middle ages gives the following satirical quatrain : — Annis mille jam peractis Nulla fides est in pactis, Mel in ore, verba lactis, * Alliteration is a favourite mode of proverbial expression; as thus, Fraud and frost end foul. Our law language also is much infected with the itch of rhyming. Art and part is a translation of ope et consilio. EXPRESSIVE DESCRIPTIONS. THERE is no poet who abounds with these more than Virgil; and they are as highly wrought as frequent. No poet expresses in a more lively or picturesque manner, the nature of the action by the march of the verse. His dactyls and spondees were powerful instruments of description, "which we upon the adverse faction want." When he had any sudden action to describe, he always made use of dactyls, and of words selected with such care and skill, as to be, if not the echo, at least a symbol of the sense. The impotent blow aimed by Priam at Pyrrhus is well expressed by the inefficient labour of the verse: Conjecit. Telumque imbelle sine ictu The following description of a storm, in the first book, has caught the attention and received the praises of all critics : Ac venti, velut agmine facto, Qua data porta, ruunt, et terras turbine perflant. Una Eurusque Notusque ruunt creberque procellis Insequitur clamorque virum stridorque rudentum. The first and second books abound in instances of this excellence in description. You can scarcely open the volume without lighting on them. Cum subito assurgens fluctu nimbosus Orion In vada cæca tulit, penitusque procacibus Austris, The description of the serpents devouring Laocoon in the second has given occasion to one of the finest pieces of sculpture ever executed; a model of artist-like anatomy, uniting the expression of pain in every limb with the most entire knowledge of the human frame, and exhibiting all the parts in terrific action. The sack of a town is strikingly represented in the two following lines: Clarescunt sonitus, armorumque ingruit horror. The other, Exoritur clamorque virum: clangorque tubarum. Popular sedition is finely described in a passage before quoted: Sævitque animis ignobile vulgus ; Jamque faces et saxa volant; furor arma ministrat. The opening of a door is so expressed that you may hear the grating: Fear is completely personified, and shown in action in the following line : Obstupuit, retroque pedem cum voce repressit. And in another passage : Obstupui, steteruntque comæ, et vox faucibus hæsit. The fall of a house is thus represented Ea lapsa, repente ruinam Cum sonitu trahit. Then the fire, Ilicet ignis edax summa ad fastigia vento In Æneidos iv. : Stat sonipes, ac fræna ferox spumantia mandit. The death of Pompey the Great is sublimely described by Lucan: Ut vidit comminus enses, And a few lines further, Seque probat moriens. See the death of Dido, as a triumphant example of pathetic description, in the fourth book of the Æneid. The good old poet Ennius thought alli teration and imitative words the best engines of description, as in the two following instances : At tuba terribili sonitu taratantara dixit. The other is quoted by Cicero in his third book De Oratore: Africa terribili tremit horrida terra tumultu. Martial describes the water of Dircenna as of icy coldness: Avidam rigens Dircenna placabit sitim, Lib. i. epig. 50. |