Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosae
    Addiderant; rutili tres ignis, et alitis austri: 
    Fulgores nunc terrificos, sonitumque, metumque
    Miscebant operi, flammisque sequacibus iras.

This seems to me admirably sublime:  yet if we attend coolly to the kind of sensible images which a combination of ideas of this sort must form, the chimeras of madmen cannot appear more wild and absurd than such a picture. “Three rays of twisted showers, three of watery clouds, three of fire, and three of the winged south wind; then mixed they in the work terrific lightnings, and sound, and fear, and anger, with pursuing flames.” This strange composition is formed into a gross body; it is hammered by the Cyclops, it is in part polished, and partly continues rough.  The truth is, if poetry gives us a noble assemblage of words corresponding to many noble ideas, which are connected by circumstances of time or place, or related to each other as cause and effect, or associated in any natural way, they may be moulded together in any form, and perfectly answer their end.  The picturesque connection is not demanded; because no real picture is formed; nor is the effect of the description at all the less upon this account.  What is said of Helen by Priam and the old men of his council, is generally thought to give us the highest possible idea of that fatal beauty.

[Greek:  Ou nemesis, Troas kai euknemidas ’Achaious Toied’ amphi gunaiki polun chronon algea paschein Ainos athanatesi thees eis opa eoiken.]

   “They cried, No wonder such celestial charms
    For nine long years have set the world in arms;
    What winning graces! what majestic mien! 
    She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen.”

POPE.

Here is not one word said of the particulars of her beauty; nothing which can in the least help us to any precise idea of her person; but yet we are much more touched by this manner of mentioning her, than by those long and labored descriptions of Helen, whether handed down by tradition, or formed by fancy, which are to be met with in some authors.  I am sure it affects me much more than the minute description which Spenser has given of Belphebe; though I own that there are parts, in that description, as there are in all the descriptions of that excellent writer, extremely fine and poetical.  The terrible picture which Lucretius has drawn of religion in order to display the magnanimity of his philosophical hero in opposing her, is thought to be designed with great boldness and spirit:—­

    Humana ante oculos foede cum vita jaceret,
    In terris, oppressa gravi sub religione,
    Quae caput e coeli regionibus ostendebat
    Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans;
    Primus Graius homo mortales tollere contra
    Est oculos ausus.