" This is like Merry-Andrew on the low rope copying
lubberly the same tricks which his master is so dexterously
performing on the high.
I will trouble your lordship but with one objection more, which I
know not whether I found in Le Febvre or Valois, but I am sure I
have read it in another French critic, whom I will not name because
I think it is not much for his reputation. Virgil in the heat of
action--suppose, for example, in describing the fury of his hero in
a battle (when he is endeavouring to raise our concernments to the
highest pitch)--turns short on the sudden into some similitude which
diverts, say they, your attention from the main subject, and
misspends 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 would be thought heroic
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.
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