Of extravagant metaphor, the
result of this same making sound the file-leader of sense, a single
example from "Heraclius" shall suffice:--
"La vapeur de mon sang ira grossir la foudre
Que Dieu tient deja prete a le reduire en poudre."
One cannot think of a Louis Quatorze Apollo except in a full-bottomed
periwig, and the tragic style of their poets is always showing the
disastrous influence of that portentous comet. It is the _style perruque_
in another than the French meaning of the phrase, and the skill lay in
dressing it majestically, so that, as Cibber says, "upon the head of a
man of sense, _if it became him_, it could never fail of drawing to him a
more partial regard and benevolence than could possibly be hoped for in
an ill-made one." It did not become Dryden, and he left it off.[55]
Like his own Zimri, Dryden was "all for" this or that fancy, till he took
up with another. But even while he was writing on French models, his
judgment could not be blinded to their defects. "Look upon the 'Cinna'
and the 'Pompey,' they are not so properly to be called plays as long
discourses of reason of State, and 'Polieucte' in matters of religion is
as solemn as the long stops upon our organs; ... their actors speak by
the hour-glass like our parsons.
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