he death of Cleopatra, and says she did--_asperos
tractare serpentes, ut atrum corpore combiberet cenenum,_--because the
body, in that action, performs what is proper to the mouth?

As for hyperboles, I will neither quote Lucan, nor Statius, men of an
unbounded imagination, but who often wanted the poize of judgment. The
divine Virgil was not liable to that exception; and yet he describes
Polyphemus thus:

_--Graditurque per aequor
Jam medium; necdum fluctus latera ardua tinxit._

In imitation of this place, our admirable Cowley thus paints Goliah:

The valley, now, this monster seemed to fill;
And we, methought, looked up to him from our hill:

where the two words, _seemed_ and _methought_, have mollified the
figure; and yet if they had not been there, the fright of the
Israelites might have excused their belief of the giant's stature[1].

In the eighth of the AEneids, Virgil paints the swiftness of Camilla
thus:

_Ilia vel intactae segetis per summa volaret
Gramina, nec teneras cursu laesisset aristas;
Vel mare per medium, fluctu suspensa tumenti,
Ferret iter, celeres nec tingeret aequore plantas._

You are not obliged, as in history, to a literal belief of what the
poet says; but you are pleased with the image, without being cozened
by the fiction.

Yet even in history, Longinus quotes Herodotus on this occasion of
hyperboles. The Lacedemonians, says he, at the straits of Thermopylae,
defended themselves to the last extremity; and when their arms failed
them, fought it out with their nails and teeth; till at length, (the
Persians shooting continually upon them) they lay buried under the
arrows of their enemies. It is not reasonable, (continues the critic)
to believe, that men could defend themselves with their nails and
teeth from an armed multitude; nor that they lay buried under a pile
of darts and arrows; and yet there wants not probability for the
figure: because the hyperbole seems not to have been made for the sake
of the description; but rather to have been produced from the
occasion.

It is true, the boldness of the figures is to be hidden sometimes by
the address of the poet; that they may work their effect upon the
mind, without discovering the art which caused it. And therefore they
are principally to be used in passion; when we speak more warmly, and
with more precipitation than at other times: For then, _Si vis me
flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi;_ the poet must put on t