Why have so many of the greatest men of genius been unhappy in their Love and Marriage? Because they had in their minds the loveliest visions of possible feminine perfection, but did not find them realised in life. For a while their pre-eminently strong imaginations helped them to keep up the illusion; but the truth would out at last; and in the pangs of disappointment they threw themselves upon the poetic device of Hyperbole, and tried to console themselves by painting the images of perfection which did not exist in life. Love, it is true, is not the only theme which they have embellished with the ornaments of Hyperbole. A wonderful example of non-erotic Hyperbole occurs in Macbeth— “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.” But as a rule the finest specimens of poetic imagery are to be found in erotic Hyperbole; and it seems most strange that Goldsmith, who had so deep an insight into Love, does not mention this variety at all in his essay on Hyperbole. Love, says Emerson, is “the deification of persons”; and though the poet, like every other lover, “beholding his maiden, half-knows that she is not verily that which he worships,” this does not prevent him from idealising her portrait, and sketching her as he would like to have her. A few additional specimens of such poetic Hyperbole may fitly close this chapter— SHAKSPERE— “She is mine own, And I as rich in having such a jewel As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl, The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.” SOUTHWELL— “A honey shower rains from her lips.” MARLOWE— “O, thou art fairer than the evening air Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.” And again— “Many would praise the sweet smell as she past, When ’twas the odour which her breath forth cast; And there for honey bees have sought in vain, And, beat from thence, have lighted there again.” Or, as Lamb puts it, lovers sometimes