Icci, _beatis_ nunc Arabum invides
Gazis.
_Hora. Carm. l. 1. ode 29._
When sapless age, and weak unable limbs,
Should bring thy father to his _drooping_ chair.
_Shakespear._
By art, the pilot through the boiling deep
And howling tempest, steers the _fearless_ ship.
_Iliad xxiii. 385._
Then, nothing loath, th’ enamour’d fair he led,
And sunk transported on the _conscious_ bed.
_Odyss._ viii. 337.
A _stupid_ moment motionless she stood.
_Summer, l. 1336._
8. A circumstance connected with a subject, expressed as a quality of
the subject.
Breezy summit.
’Tis ours the chance of fighting fields to try.
_Iliad_ i. 301.
Oh! had I dy’d before that well-fought wall.
_Odyss._ v. 395.
From this table it appears, that the expressing an effect as an
attribute of the cause, is not so agreeable as the opposite expression.
The descent from cause to effect is natural and easy: the opposite
direction resembles retrograde motion[25]. _Panting height_, for
example, _astonish’d thought_, are strained and uncouth expressions,
which a writer of taste will avoid. For the same reason, an epithet is
unsuitable, which at present is not applicable to the subject, however
applicable it may be afterward.
_Submersasque_ obrue puppes.
_Æneid. i. 73_.
And mighty _ruins_ fall.
_Iliad_ v. 411.
Impious sons their _mangled_ fathers wound.
Another rule regards this figure, That the property of one object ought
not to be bestowed upon another with which it is incongruous:
_K. Rich._---- How dare thy joints forget
To pay their _awful_ duty to our presence.
_Richard_ II. _act 3. sc. 6._
The connection betwixt an awful superior and his submissive dependent is
so intimate, that an attribute may readily be transferred from the one
to the other. But awfulness cannot be so transferred, because it is
inconsistent with submission.