But
I believe every Reader will think, that in such sublime Writings the
mentioning of her as it is done in Scripture, has something in it more
just, as well as great, than all that the most fanciful Poet could have
bestowed upon her in the Richness of his Imagination.

L.

[Footnote 1:

Reddere personae scit convenientia cuique.

Hor.]

[Footnote 2: Revelation vi. 8.]

[Footnote 3: [Sin and Death]]

[Footnote 4: In the fourteenth Book, where Here visits the home of
Sleep, the brother of Death, and offers him the bribe of a gold chain if
he will shut the eyes of Zeus, Sleep does not think it can be done. Here
then doubles her bribe, and offers Sleep a wife, the youngest of the
Graces. Sleep makes her swear by Styx that she will hold to her word,
and when she has done so flies off in her company, sits in the shape of
a night-hawk in a pine tree upon the peak of Ida, whence when Zeus was
subdued by love and sleep, Sleep went down to the ships to tell Poseidon
that now was his time to help the Greeks.]

[Footnote 5: In the Prometheus Bound of AEschylus, the binding of
Prometheus by pitiless Strength, who mocks at compassion in the god
Hephaistos, charged to serve him in this office, opens the sublimest of
the ancient dramas. Addison is wrong in saying that there is a
personification here of Strength and Necessity; Hephaistos does indeed
say that he obeys Necessity, but his personified companions are Strength
and Force, and of these Force appears only as the dumb attendant of
Strength. Addisons greatest critics had something to learn when they
were blind to the significance of the contrast between Visible Strength
at the opening of this poem, and the close with sublime prophecy of an
unseen Power of the Future that disturbs Zeus on his throne, and gathers
his thunders about the undaunted Prometheus.

Now let the shrivelling flame at me be driven,
Let him, with flaky snowstorms and the crash
Of subterraneous thunders, into ruins
And wild confusion hurl and mingle all:
For nought of these will bend me that I speak
Who is foredoomed to cast him from his throne.

(Mrs. Websters translation.)]

[Footnote 6: Habakkuk iii. 5.]

* * * * *

No. 358. Monday, April 21, 1702. Steele.

Desipere in loco.

Hor.

Charles Lillie attended me the other day, and made me a Present of a
large Sheet of P