ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ἀπὸ σκοπιῆς εἴδε νέφος αἰπολος ἀνήρ ἐρχόμενον κατὰ πόντον ὑπὸ Ζεφύροιο ἰωῆς τῷ δε τ’ ἄνευθεν ἐόντι, μελάντερον ἠΰτε πίσσα, φαίνετ’ ἰὸν κατὰ πόντον, ἄγει δέ τε λαῖλαπα πολλὴν. (As when a goat-herd from some hill-peak sees a cloud coming across the deep with the blast of the west wind behind it; and to him, being as he is afar, it seems blacker, even as pitch, as it goes along the deep, bringing with it a great whirlwind.) So again the fine simile in _Elaine_, beginning Bare as a wild wave in the wide North Sea, is at least modelled on the simile in _Iliad_, xv., 381-4, with reminiscences of the same similes in _Iliad_, xv., 624, and _Iliad_, iv., 42-56. The simile in the first section of the _Princess_, As when a field of corn Bows all its ears before the roaring East, reminds us of Homer’s ὡς δ’ ὅτε κινήση Ζέφυρος βαθυλήϊον, ἐλθὼν λάβρος, ἐπαιγίζων, ἐπὶ τ’ ἠμύει ἀσταχύεσσιν. (As when the west wind tosses a deep cornfield rushing down with furious blast, and it bows with all its ears.) Nothing could be more happy than such an adaptation as the following— Ever fail’d to draw The quiet night into her blood, from Virgil, _Æn_., iv., 530:— Neque unquam Solvitur in somnos _oculisve aut pectore noctem Accipit._ (And she never relaxes into sleep, or receives the night in eyes or bosom), or than the following (in _Enid_) from Theocritus:— Arms on which the standing muscle sloped, As slopes a wild brook o’er a little stone, Running too vehemently to break upon it. ἐν δὲ μύες στερεοῖσι βραχίοσιν ἄκρον ὑπ’ ὦμον ἔστασαν, ἠύτε πέτροι ὀλοίτροχοι οὕς τε κυλίνδον χειμάῤῥους ποταμὸς μεγάλαις περιέξεσε δίναις. —_Idyll_, xxii., 48 _seq._ (And the muscles on his brawny arms close under the shoulder stood out like boulders which the wintry torrent has rolled and worn smooth with the mighty eddies.) But there was another use to which Tennyson applied his accurate and intimate acquaintance with the classics. It lay in developing what was suggested by them, in unfolding, so to speak, what was furled in their imagery. Nothing is more striking in ancient classical poetry than its pregnant condensation. It often expresses in an epithet what might be expanded into a detailed picture, or calls up in a single phrase a whole scene or a whole position. Where in _Merlin and Vivian_ Tennyson described The _blind wave feeling round his long sea hall In silence_, he was merely unfolding to its full Homer’s κῦμα κωφόν—“dumb wave”; just as the best of all comments on Horace’s expression, “Vultus nimium lubricus aspici,” _Odes_, _I._, xix., 8, is given us in Tennyson’s picture of the Oread in Lucretius:— How the sun delights To _glance and shift about her slippery sides_. Or take again this passage in the _Agamemnon_, 404-5, describing Menelaus pining in his desolate palace for the lost Helen:— πόθῳ δ’ ὑπερποντίας φάσμα δόξει δόμων ἀνάσσειν