They with fastidious meanings do not always
engage one's ears, whilst the latter satisfy one's eyes, as with some
beautiful spectacle they hold all men prisoners and entranced; and the
passage over which good poets most trouble themselves, and which they hold
as the greatest finesse, is to show you in words (perchance too many and
too long), as if painting a storm on the sea, or the burning of a city,
which storm, if they were able, they would rather paint, for when you
finish the work of reading, you have already forgotten the commencement,
and you have only present the short verse on which your eyes were last
fixed; and the one who shows you this best is the best poet.
"Now, how much more does painting say which shows you that storm
altogether with the thunder, lightning, waves, vessels, and reefs, and you
see: _omniaque viris ostentant praesentem mortem_, and in the same place:
_ex-templo Aeneas tendens ad sidera palmas_ and _tres Eurus abreptas in
saxa latentia torquet emissamque hyemem sensit Neptunus et imis_, and
likewise it shows very present and visibly all the burning of the city, in
every part, represented and seen as if it were really true; on one side
those who run through the streets and squares, on the other those who jump
from the walls and towers; here the temples half demolished and the
reflection of the flames in the rivers, and the surrounded shores
illuminated; how Pantheus as he runs away limping with his idols, leading
his grandchild by the hand; how the Trojan horse gives birth in the centre
of a great square to armed men; how Neptune, very wrath, throws down the
walls; how Pyrrhus beheads Priam; AEneas with his father on his shoulders,
and Ascanius and Creusa who follow him in the darkness of night, full of
fear; and all this so present and so connected and natural that very often
you are moved to think that you are not safe before it, and you are glad
to know they are only colours and that they cannot inspire or do harm.
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