(I beg pardon of the gentle English reader, and such of our writers as understand not Latin.) Lo! how this is taken down by our British poet, by the single happy thought of throwing the mountain into a fit of the colic.
Etna, and all the burning mountains, find
Their kindled stores with inbred storms of wind
Blown up to rage; and roaring out complain,
As torn with inward gripes, and tort'ring pain:
Laboring, they cast their dreadful vomit round,
And with their melted bowels spread the ground[1].
Horace, in search of the sublime, struck his head against the stars[2]; but Empedocles, to fathom the profund, threw himself into Ætna. And who but would imagine our excellent modern had also been there, from this description?
Imitation is of two sorts; the first is, when we force to our own purposes the thought of others; the second, consists in copying the imperfections or blemishes of celebrated authors. I have seen a play professedly writ in the style of Shakspeare, wherein the resemblance lay in one single line,
And so good morrow t' ye, good master lieutenant.
And sundry poems in imitation of Milton, where, with the utmost exactness, and not so much as one exception, nevertheless was constantly nathless, embroidered was broidered, hermits were eremites, disdained 'sdeigned, shady umbrageous, enterprise emprize, pagan paynim, pinions pennons, sweet dulcet, orchards orchats, bridge-work pontifical; nay her was hir, and their was thir through the whole
- ↑ Pr. Arthur, p. 75.
- ↑ Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.
