Wakefield in his "Commentary" has a copious passage on this poetical diction. He conceives it to be "an admirable improvement of the Greek and Roman classics:"
--keen audên: HES. Scut. Her. 396. --Suaves ex ore _loquelas_ _Funde_. LUCRET. i. 40.
This learned editor was little conversant with modern literature, as he proved by his memorable editions of Gray and Pope. The expression is evidently borrowed not from Hesiod, nor from Lucretius, but from a brother at home.
Is it for thee, the Linnet POURS HER THROAT? _Essay on Man_, Ep. iii, v. 33.
Gray, in the "Ode to Adversity," addresses the power thus,
Thou tamer of the human breast, Whose IRON SCOURGE and TORTURING HOUR The bad affright, afflict the best.
Wakefield censures the expression "_torturing hour_," by discovering an impropriety and incongruity. He says, "consistency of figure rather required some _material_ image, like _iron scourge_ and _adamantine chain_." It is curious to observe a verbal critic lecture such a poet as Gray! The poet probably would never have replied, or, in a moment of excessive urbanity, he might have condescended to point out to this minutest of critics the following passage in Milton:--
----When the SCOURGE Inexorably, and the TORTURING HOUR Calls us to penance. _Par. Lost_, B. ii. v. 90.
Light THEY DISPERSE, and with them go The SUMMER FRIEND.
Fond of this image, he has it again in his "Bard,"
They SWARM, that in thy NOONTIDE BEAM are born, Gone!
Perhaps the germ of this beautiful image may be found in Shakspeare:--
---- for men, like BUTTERFLIES, Show not their mealy wings but to THE SUMMER. _Troilus and Cressida_, Act iii. s. 7.
And two similar passages in _Timon of Athens_:--
The swallow follows not summer more willingly than we your lordship.
_Timon_. Nor more willingly leaves winter; such _summer birds_ are men.--Act iii.
----one cloud of winter showers These flies are couch'd.--Act ii.
Wakefield has traced this imitation to Dryden; Gray himself refers to Virgil and Petrarch. Wakefield gives the line from Dryden, thus:--
Beyond the year, and out of heaven's high-way;
which he calls extremely bold and poetical. I confess a critic might be allowed to be somewhat fastidious in this unpoetical diction on the _high-way_, which I believe Dryden never used. I think his line was thus:--