A blanket in th' alarm of fear caught up.
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd
'Gainst fortune's state would treason have pronounc'd;
But if the gods themselves did see her then,
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made
(Unless things mortal move them not at all)
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods.

What a pudder is here kept in raising the expression of trifling
thoughts! would not a man have thought that the poet had been bound
prentice to a wheel-wright, for his first rant? and had followed a
rag-man, for the clout and blanket, in the second? Fortune is painted
on a wheel, and therefore the writer, in a rage, will have poetical
justice done upon every member of that engine: after this execution,
he bowls the nave down-hill, from heaven, to the fiends: (an
unreasonable long mark, a man would think;) 'tis well there are no
solid orbs to stop it in the way, or no element of fire to consume it:
but when it came to the earth, it must be monstrous heavy, to break
ground as low as the center. His making milch the burning eyes of
heaven, was a pretty tolerable flight too: and I think no man ever
drew milk out of eyes before him: yet, to make the wonder greater,
these eyes were burning. Such a sight indeed were enough to have
raised passion in the gods; but to excuse the effects of it, he tells
you, perhaps they did not see it. Wise men would be glad to find a
little sense couched under all these pompous words; for bombast is
commonly the delight of that audience, which loves poetry, but
understands it not: and as commonly has been the practice of those
writers, who, not being able to infuse a natural passion into the
mind, have made it their business to ply the ears, and to stun their
judges by the noise. But Shakespeare does not often thus; for the
passions in his scene between Brutus and Cassius are extremely
natural, the thoughts are such as arise from the matter, the
expression of them not viciously figurative. I cannot leave this
subject, before I do justice to that divine poet, by giving you one of
his passionate descriptions: 'tis of Richard the Second when he was
deposed, and led in triumph through the streets of London by Henry of
Bolingbroke: the painting of it is so lively, and the words so moving
that I have scarce read any thing comparable to it, in any