_Athenes me montra mon superbe ennemie;_ _Je le vis, je rougis, je plaîs, à sa vue;_ _Un trouble s'éleva dans mon âme éperdue;_ _Mes yeux ne voyaient plus, je ne pouvais parler,_ _Je sentis tout mon corps et transir et brûler;_ _Je reconnus Venus et ses traits redoubtables,_ _D'un sang qu'elle poursuit tormens inévitables._ _Yes;--Athens showed me my proud enemy;_ _I saw him--blushed--turned pale;--_ _A sudden trouble came upon my soul,--_ _My eyes grew dim--my tongue refused its office,--_ _I burned--and shivered;--through my trembling frame_ _Venus in all her dreadful power I felt,_ _Shooting through every vein a separate pang._ It is quite clear that since Athens showed her her proud enemy Hippolytus, she _saw_ Hippolytus; if she blushed and turned pale, she was doubtless _troubled_. It would have been a pleonasm, a redundancy, if a stranger had been made to relate the loves of Phædra; but it is Phædra, enamored and ashamed of her passion--her heart is full--everything escapes her: _Ut vidi, lit perii, ut me malus abstulit error._ _Je le vis, je rougis, je pâlis, à sa vue._ I saw him--blushed--turned pale.-- What can be a better imitation of Virgil? _Mes yeux ne voyaient plus, je ne pouvais parler;_ _Je sentis tout mon corps et transir et brûler;_ My eyes grew dim--my tongue refused its office; I burned--and shivered; What can be a finer imitation of Sappho? These lines, though imitated, flow as from their first source; each word moves and penetrates the feeling heart; this is not amplification; it is the perfection of nature and of art. The following is, in my opinion, an instance of amplification, in a modern tragedy, which nevertheless has great beauties. Tydeus is at the court of Argos; he is in love with a sister of Electra; he laments the fall of his friend Orestes and of his father; he is divided betwixt his passion for Electra and his desire of vengeance; while in this state of care and perplexity he gives one of his followers a long description of a tempest, in which he had been shipwrecked some time before.