_Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air!_
Gray has been severely censured by Johnson for the expression,
Give _ample room and verge enough_,
The characters of hell to trace.--_The Bard_.
On the authority of the most unpoetical of critics, we must still hear
that the poet _has no line so bad_.--"_ample room_" is feeble, but would
have passed unobserved in any other poem but in the poetry of Gray, who
has taught us to admit nothing but what is exquisite. "_Verge enough_"
is poetical, since it conveys a material image to the imagination. No
one appears to have detected the source from whence, probably, the
_whole line_ was derived. I am inclined to think it was from the
following passage in Dryden:
Let fortune empty her whole quiver on me,
I have a soul that, like an AMPLE SHIELD,
Can take in all, and VERGE ENOUGH for more!
Dryden's _Don Sebastian._