"the Imagination is fo warm'd and affected, "that you seem to behold yourself the very "Things you are describing, and to display "them to the life before the Eyes of an Audience."

You cannot be ignorant, that rhetorical and poetical Images have a different Intent. The Design of a poetical Image is Surprize, that of a rhetorical is Perfpicuity. However to move and ftrike the Imagination is a Defign common to both.

* Pity thy Offspring, Mother, nor provoke

Thofe vengeful Furies to torment thy Son.

What horrid Sights! how glare their bloody Eyes!
How twisting Snakes curl round their venom'd Heads!
In deadly Wrath the biffing Monsters rise,
Forward they fpring, dart out, and leap around me.*

And again,

Alas!-fhe'll kill me! whither fhall I fly ? +

The Poet here actually faw the Furies with the Eyes of his Imagination, and has compell'd his Audience to fee what he beheld himfelf. Euripides therefore has labour'd very much in his Tragedies to describe the two Paffions of Madness and Love, and has fucceed

Euripid. Oreft. ver. 255.

† Euripid. Iphigen. Taur. ver. 408.

ed

ed much better in thefe, than (if I am not mistaken) in any other. Sometimes indeed

he boldly aims at Images of different kinds. For tho' his Genius was not naturally great, yet in many Instances he even forced it up to the true Spirit of Tragedy; and that he may always rife where his Subject demands it (to borrow an Allufion from the Poet) *

Lafb'd by his Tail his heaving Sides incite
His Courage, and provoke himself for Fight.

The foregoing Affertion is evident from that Paffage, where Sol delivers the Reins of his Chariot to Phaeton:

Drive on, but cautious fhun the Libyan Air;
That bot unmoiften'd Region of the Sky

Thence let the Pleiads point thy wary Courfe. +
Thus fpoke the God. Th'impatient Youth with baste
Snatches the Reins, and vaults into the Seat.
He starts; the Courfers, whom the lafbing Whip
Excites, outftrip the Winds, and whirl the Car
High thro' the airy Void. Behind the Sixe,
Borne on his Planetary Steed, pursues

With

Il. v. ver. 170. ++ Two Fragments of Euripides.

With Eye intent, and warns him with his Voice, Drive there! ---- now here! ---- bere! turn the Chariot

bere!

Who would not fay, that the Soul of the Poet mounted the Chariot along with the Rider, that it fhar'd as well in Danger, as in Rapidity of Flight with the Horses? For, had he not been hurried on with equal Ardour thro' all this ethereal Courfe, he could never have conceived fo grand an Image of it. There are some parallel Images in his 3 Caffandra.

Ye martial Trojans, &c.

Efchylus has made bold Attempts in noble and truly heroic Images; as, in one of his Tragedies, the feven Commanders against Thebes, without betraying the leaft fign of Pity or Regret, bind themselves by Oath not to furvive Eteocles:

4 The Seven, a warlike Leader each in chief,

Stood round, and o'er the brazen Shield they flew
A fullen Bull; then plunging deep their Hands
Into the foaming Gore, with Oaths invok❜d
Mars, and Enyo, and blood-thirfting Terror.

Sometimes indeed the Thoughts of this Author are too grofs, rough, and unpolished; yet

Euripides

Euripides himself, fpurr'd on too faft by Emulation, ventures even to the brink of like Imperfections. In Afchylus the Palace of Lycurgus is furprizingly affected by the fudden Appearance of Bacchus :

The frantic Dome and roaring Roofs convuls'd,
Reel to and fro, inftinct with Rage divine.

Euripides has the fame Thought, but he

has turn'd it with much more Softness and Propriety:

The vocal Mount in Agitation fhakes, 5
And echoes back the Bacchanalian Cries.

Sophocles has fucceeded nobly in his Images, when he describes his Oedipus in all the Agonies of approaching Death, and burying himself in the midft of a prodigious Tempeft; when he gives us a Sight of the 6 Apparition of Achilles upon his Tomb, at the Departure of the Greeks from Troy. But I know not, whether any one has described that Apparition, more divinely than 7 Simonides. To quote all these Inftances at large would be endless.

To return: Images in Poetry are push'd to a fabulous Excefs, quite furpaffing the Bounds of Probability; whereas in Oratory, their Beauty confifts in the most exact Propriety and

niceft

niceft Truth: and fublime Excurfions are abe furd and impertinent, when mingled with Fiction and Fable, where Fancy fallies out into direct Impoffibilities. Yet to Exceffes like these, our able Orators (kind Heaven make them really fuch!) are very much addicted. With the Tragedians, they behold the tormenting Furies, and with all their Sagacity never find out, that when Oreftes exclaims, †

Loofe me, thou Fury, let me go, Torment'ress :
Clofe you embrace, to plunge me headlong down
Into th' Abyfs of Tartarus

the Image had feiz'd his Fancy, because the mad Fit was upon him, and he was actually raving.

What then is the true Ufe of Images in Oratory? They are capable, in abundance of cafes, to add both Nerves and Paffion to our Speeches. For if the Images be skilfully blended with the Proofs and Defcriptions, they not only perfuade, but fubdue an Audience. "If "{ any one, fays a great Orator, * should hear

a fudden Out-cry before the Tribunal, "whilft another brings the News, that the "Prison is burft open, and the Captivos "efcaped, no Man, either young or old, "would

+ Euripid. Oreft. v. 264. * Demofth. Qrat. contra Timocr. non procul a fine.