examples. Nothing can be finer than the description
of Hector at the Grecian wall:--

o d ar esthore phaidimos Ektor,
Nukti thoe atalantos upopia lampe de chalko
Smerdaleo, ton eesto peri chroi doia de chersi
Dour echen ouk an tis min erukakoi antibolesas,
Nosphi theun, ot esalto pulas puri d osse dedeei.
--Autika d oi men teichos uperbasan, oi de kat autas
Poietas esechunto pulas Danaioi d ephobethen
Neas ana glaphuras omados d aliastos etuchthe.

What daring expressions! Yet how significant! How picturesque! Hector
seems to rise up in his strength and fury. The gloom of night in his
frown,--the fire burning in his eyes,--the javelins and the
blazing armour,--the mighty rush through the gates and down
the battlements,--the trampling and the infinite roar of the
multitude,--everything is with us; everything is real.

Dryden has described a very similar event in Maximin, and has done his
best to be sublime, as follows:--

"There with a forest of their darts he strove,
And stood like Capaneus defying Jove;
With his broad sword the boldest beating down,
Till Fate grew pale, lest he should win the town,
And turn'd the iron leaves of its dark book
To make new dooms, or mend what it mistook."

How exquisite is the imagery of the fairy-songs in the Tempest and the
Midsummer Night's Dream; Ariel riding through the twilight on the
bat, or sucking in the bells of flowers with the bee; or the little
bower-women of Titania, driving the spiders from the couch of the Queen!
Dryden truly said, that

"Shakspeare's magic could not copied be;
Within that circle none durst walk but he."

It would have been well if he had not himself dared to step within
the enchanted line, and drawn on himself a fate similar to that
which, according to the old superstition, punished such presumptuous
interference. The following lines are parts of the song of his
fairies:--

"Merry, merry, merry, we sail from the East,
Half-tippled at a rainbow feast.
In the bright moonshine, while winds whistle loud,
Tivy, tivy, tivy, we mount and we fly,
All racking along in a downy white cloud;
And lest our leap from the sky prove too far,
We slide on the back of a new falling star,
And drop from above
In a jelly of love."

These are very favourable instances. Those who wish for a bad one may
read the dying speeches of Maximin,