Afterwards he seems to speak diffidently of his own judgment, which is rather an unusual thing in Mr. Wakefield. Well would it have been for the reputations of Bentley, Johnson, and Wakefield, that, before improving upon Milton and Gray and Collins, they had remembered the words of a truly great critic, even Horace himself:
"Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus: Nam neque chorda sonum reddit quem vult manus et mens, Poscentique gravem persæpe remittit acutum; Nec semper feriet quodcunque minabitur arcus. _Verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit, Aut humana parum cavit natura._"
Not by any means that I am allowing in this case the existence of a "macula," or an "incuria" either. To D'Israeli's _Curiosities of Literature_ I think I am indebted for the remark, that Gray borrowed the expressions from Milton:
"When the _scourge_ Inexorably, and _the torturing hour_ Calls us to penance."
It is therefore with Milton, and not with Gray, that Mr. Wakefield must settle the matter. And in proof of my earnest sympathies with him during the very unequal contest, I will console him with "proprieties," "congruities," "consistencies of figure," and "material images," enough.
"The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel, Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel."
"Swords, daggers, bodkins, bearded arrows, spears, Nails, pincers, crosses, gibbets, hurdles, ropes, Tallons of griffins, paws and teeth of bears, Tigre's and lyon's mouths, not iron hoops, Racks, wheels, and trappados, brazen cauldrons which Boiled with oil, huge tuns which flam'd with pitch."
Beaumonts's _Psyche_, cant. XXII. v. 69. p. 330. Cambridge, 1702. Folio.
"Torturing hour" is used by Campbell in his _Pleasures of Hope_, Part I.:
"The martyr smiled beneath avenging power, And braved the tyrant in his _torturing hour._"
And, indeed, "sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child," had used it before any of them:
"Is there no play, to ease the anguish of a torturing hour."
Again, Gray writes in his truly sublime ode, "The Bard:"
"On a rock, whose haughty brow Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood, Robed in the sable garb of woe, With haggard eyes the poet _stood_, (Loose his beard, and hoary hair Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air), And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire, Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre."