style="font-size:15px;"> My roof receives me not; ’tis air I tread,
And at each step I feel my advanc’d head
Knock out a star in heav’n.
Sejanus, Ben Johnson, act 5.24
A writer who has no natural elevation of mind, deviates readily into bombast: he strains above his natural powers; and the violent effort carries him beyond the bounds of propriety. Boileau expresses this happily:
L’autre à peur de ramper, il se perd dans la nue.*
The same author, Ben Johnson, abounds in the bombast:
——— The mother,
Th’ expulsed Apicata, finds them there;
Whom when she saw lie spread on the degrees,
After a world of fury on herself,
Tearing her hair, defacing of her face,
Beating her breasts and womb, kneeling amaz’d,
Crying to heav’n, then to them; at last
Her drowned voice got up above her woes:
And with such black and bitter execrations,
(As might affright the gods, and force the sun
Run backward to the east; nay, make the old
Deformed chaos rise again t’ o’erwhelm<245>
Them, us, and all the world), she fills the air,
Upbraids the heavens with their partial dooms,
Defies their tyrannous powers, and demands
What she and those poor innocents have transgress’d,
That they must suffer such a share in vengeance.
Sejanus, act 5. sc. last.
——— Lentulus, the man,
If all our fire were out, would fetch down new,
Out of the hand of Jove; and rivet him,
To Caucasus, should he but frown; and let
His own gaunt eagle fly at him to tire.
Catiline, act 3.
Can these, or such, be any aid to us?
Look they as they were built to shake the world,
Or be a moment to our enterprise?
A thousand, such as they are, could not make
One atom of our souls. They should be men
Worth heaven’s fear, that looking up, but thus,
Would make Jove stand upon his guard, and draw
Himself within his thunder; which, amaz’d,
He should discharge in vain, and they unhurt.
Or, if they were, like Capaneus at Thebes,
They should hang dead upon the highest spires,
And ask the second bolt to be thrown down.
Why Lentulus talk you so long? This time
Had been enough t’ have scatter’d all the stars,
T’ have quench’d the sun and moon, and made the world
Despair of day, or any light but ours.
Catiline, act 4.<246>
This is the language of a madman:
Guildford. Give way, and let the gushing torrent come,
Behold the tears we bring to swell the deluge,
Till the flood rise upon the guilty world
And make the ruin common.
Lady Jane Gray, act 4. near the end.25
I am sorry to observe that the following bombast stuff dropt from the pen of Dryden.26
To see this fleet upon the ocean move,
Angels drew wide the curtains of the skies;
And heaven, as if there wanted lights above,
For tapers made two glaring comets rise.
Another species of false sublime, is still more faulty than bombast; and that is, to force elevation by introducing imaginary beings without preserving any propriety in their actions; as if it were lawful to ascribe every extravagance and inconsistence to beings of the poet’s creation. No writers are more licentious in that article than Johnson and Dryden:
Methinks I see Death and the furies waiting
What we will do, and all the heaven at leisure
For the great spectacle. Draw then your swords:
And if our destiny envy our virtue
The honour of the day, yet let us care
To sell ourselves at such a price, as may
Undo the world to buy us, and make Fate,
While she tempts ours, to fear her own estate.
Catiline, act 5.<247>
——— The Furies stood on hill
Circling the place, and trembled to see men
Do more than they: whilst Piety left the field,
Griev’d for that side, that in so bad a cause
They knew not what a crime their valour was.
The Sun stood still, and was, behind the cloud
The battle made, seen sweating to drive up
His frighted horse, whom still the noise drove backward.
Ibid. act 5.
Osmyn. While we indulge our common happiness,
He is forgot by whom we all possess,
The brave Almanzor, to whose arms we owe
All that we did, and all that we shall do;
Who
