"Some joy too fine, Too subtle-potent, tun'd too sharp in sweetness, For the capacity of my ruder powers."
It would be strange indeed if a man so exceedingly daring did not now and then overdare. And so I think the Poet's boldness in metaphor sometimes makes him overbold, or at least betrays him into infelicities of boldness. Here are two instances, from _The Tempest_, v. 1:
"The charm dissolves apace; And as the morning steals upon the night, Melting the darkness, so their rising senses Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle Their clearer reason."
"Their understanding Begins to swell; and the approaching tide Will shortly fill the reasonable shore That now lies foul and muddy."
And here is another, of perhaps still more questionable character, from _Macbeth_, i. 7:
"His two chamberlains Will I with wine and wassail so convince, That memory, the warder of the brain, Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason A limbeck only."
What, again, shall be said of the two following, where Coriolanus snaps off his fierce scorn of the multitude?--
"What's the matter, you dissentious rogues, That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion, Make yourselves scabs?"
"So shall my lungs Coin words till their decay against those measles, Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought The very way to catch them."
Either from overboldness in the metaphors, or from some unaptness in the material of them, I have to confess that my mind rather rebels against these stretches of poetical prerogative. Still more so, perhaps, in the well-known passage of _King Henry the Fifth_, iv. 3; though I am not sure but, in this case, the thing rightly belongs to the speaker's character:
"And those that leave their valiant bones in France, Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills, They shall be fam'd; for there the Sun shall greet them, And draw their honours reeking up to heaven; Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime, The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France. Mark, then, abounding valour in our English; That, being dead, like to the bullet's grazing, Break out into a second course of mischief, Killing in rélapse of mortality."
But, whatever be the right mark to set upon these and some other instances, I find but few occasions of such revolt; and my only wonder is, how any mere human genius could be so gloriously audacious, and yet be so seldom chargeable with passing the just bounds of poetical privilege.