a flood of tears.”  The impressions which the frame experiences in this state, leave deeper traces behind them than those of reverie.  A circumstance accidentally preserved has informed us of the tremors of DRYDEN after having written that ode,[A] which, as he confessed, he had pursued without the power of quitting it; but these tremors were not unusual with him—­for in the preface to his “Tales,” he tells us, that “in translating Homer he found greater pleasure than in Virgil; but it was not a pleasure without pain; the continual agitation of the spirits must needs be a weakener to any constitution, especially in age, and many pauses are required for refreshment betwixt the heats.”

[Footnote A:  This famous and unparalleled ode was probably afterwards retouched; but Joseph Warton discovered in it the rapidity of the thoughts, and the glow and the expressiveness of the images; which are the certain marks of the first sketch of a master.]

We find Metastasio, like others of the brotherhood, susceptible of this state, complaining of his sufferings during the poetical aestus.  “When I apply with attention, the nerves of my sensorium are put into a violent tumult; I grow as red as a drunkard, and am obliged to quit my work.”  When BUFFON was absorbed on a subject which presented great objections to his opinions, he felt his head burn, and saw his countenance flushed; and this was a warning for him to suspend his attention.  GRAY could never compose voluntarily:  his genius resembled the armed apparition in Shakspeare’s master-tragedy.  “He would not be commanded.”  When he wished to compose the Installation Ode, for a considerable time he felt himself without the power to begin it:  a friend calling on him, GRAY flung open his door hastily, and in a hurried voice and tone, exclaiming in the first verse of that ode—­

  Hence, avaunt! ’tis holy ground!—­

his friend started at the disordered appearance of the bard, whose orgasm had disturbed his very air and countenance.

Listen to one labouring with all the magic of the spell.  Madame ROLAND has thus powerfully described the ideal presence in her first readings of Telemachus and Tassot:—­“My respiration rose, I felt a rapid fire colouring my face, and my voice changing had betrayed my agitation.  I was Eucharis for Telemachus, and Erminia for Tancred.  However, during this perfect transformation, I did not yet think that I myself was anything, for any one:  the whole had no connexion with myself.  I sought for nothing around me; I was they; I saw only the objects which existed for them; it was a dream, without being awakened.”

The description which so calm and exquisite an investigator of taste and philosophy as our sweet and polished REYNOLDS has given of himself at one of these moments, is too rare not to be recorded in his own words.  Alluding to the famous “Transfiguration,” our own RAFFAELLE says—­“When I have stood looking at that picture from figure to figure, the eagerness, the spirit, the close unaffected attention of each figure to the principal action, my thoughts have carried me away, that I have forgot myself; and for that time might be looked upon as an enthusiastic madman; for I could really fancy the whole action was passing before my eyes.”