“’Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense: Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar: When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow; Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o’er th’ unbending corn, and skims along the main.” Virgil was particularly successful in his endeavours to impart this ornament to his composition. The following lines are reckoned by the critics to be a beautiful specimen of his ability in this species of verse. “Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam Scilicet, atque Ossæ frondosum involvere Olympum.” Georg., B. I. V. 281. Sternitur exanimisque tremens procumbit humi bos. Æneis, B. 5. NOTE 160. _Those men have characters of the very worst description, who make a scruple to deny a favour; and are ashamed, or unwilling to give a downright refusal at first; but who, when the time arrives. &c._ This is one of those beautiful passages which prove Terence to have been so able a delineator of character. How faithful a picture does he here draw of this particular species of weakness! A man is asked a favour which he knows it is out of his power to compass, and yet feels a repugnance to candidly avow it: he cannot bear to witness the uneasiness of the disappointed person, and, from a kind of false shame, he misleads him with a promise which he cannot perform. To detect those lurking impulses which almost escape observation, though they influence the actions: to describe with force and elegance, and convince the mind of a feeling of which it was before scarcely conscious, is an effort of genius worthy of a Terence. NOTE 161. _If any one tell me, that no advantage will result from it: I answer this, that I shall poison his joy: and even that will yield me some satisfaction._ Ingeram mala multa: atque aliquis dicat; Nihil promoveris. Multum; molestus certè ei fuero, atque animo morem gessero. This sentiment has been imitated by the first of dramatists in his Othello: he has expanded it into a greater number of lines, which are extremely beautiful. _Iago._ Call up her father, Rouse him, make after him, poison his delight. Proclaim him in the streets, incense her kinsmen. And tho’ he in a fertile climate dwell, Plague him with flies: tho’ that his joy be joy, Yet throw such changes of vexation on’t, As it may lose some colour.―― SHAKSPEARE’S _Othello_, A. 1. S. 1.