_Then crown'd, again their golden Harps, they took
Harps ever tun'd, that glitt'ring by their Side
Like Quivers hung, and with Preamble sweet
Of charming Symphony, they introduce
The sacred Song, and waken Raptures high:
No one exempt, no Voice but well cou'd joyn
Melodious Part, such Concord is in Heav'n._
Having mention'd so many noble Thoughts in Verse, I shall conclude this
Article, with a very plain but very noble one in Prose, the Saying of
_Leonidas_ to _Xerxes_: _If you had not been too powerful and too happy,
you might have been an honest Man._
Tho' it is a very hard Matter to distinguish the _Grand_ from the
_Noble_ in the Manner of Thinking, yet we shall endeavour it by the
following Examples; and sure nothing can be more _Grand_, than the
Saying of _Alexander the Great_, to the Greatest of his Captains
_Parmenio_, _Darius_, King of _Persia_, having offer'd the _Macedonian_
Monarch half _Asia_ in Marriage with his Daughter _Statira_. _As for
me_, says _Parmenio_, _if I were_ Alexander, _I would accept of these
Offers_: _And so would I_, reply'd that Prince, _If I were_ Parmenio.
But why should we be always dealing in _Heroicks_, and running back into
Antiquity to borrow Example from the Conquerors of the World. Why may
not we propose one in the lowest Life, which will at the same Time
prove, that the Excellencies of both Thought and Expression are in
Nature, and not in the Rules of Art only. A Sergeant of the Guards,
_What a terrible Fall is this, from_ Alexander the Great, _to a Sergeant
of the Guards!_ who was in the last Attack upon the Castle of _Namur_ in
King _William_'s War, after he had fir'd his Grenades at the Enemy
behind the Palisadoes, leapt over them, and had been slaughter'd, had
not a _French_ Officer prevented it. The Sergeant being a Prisoner in
the Castle was sent for by the Governour Count _Guiscard_, and the
Mareschal _de Boufflers_. The Latter demanding how he durst attempt to
leap the Palisadoes with the Enemy behind them, when he could hardly
have done it had there been none? _Perhaps, Sir, I might not,_ reply'd
the brave _English_ Soldier, _but there is nothing too difficult for me
to come at my Enemy._ A Saying worthy of _Alexander_ or _Cæsar_, of
_Marlborough_ or _Eugene_.
I have seen something like these Verses of Mr. _Waller_'s, quoted as in
the grand Way of Thinking:
_Great_ Maro _could no greater Tempest feign,
When the loud Winds usurping on the Main,
For angry_ Juno _labour'd to destroy
The hated Relicks of confounded_ Troy.
But the Image, as grand as it is, does not seem to be so noble as
the Instances before-mentioned; there is too much Terrour in it to
participate of that Kind of Thought, which is not confident with what
is terrible.