And, peradventure, something like this might be working in the fancy of
the ancient painter,--[Cicero, De Orator., c. 22 ; Pliny, xxxv. 10.]--
who having, in the sacrifice of Iphigenia, to represent the sorrow of the
assistants proportionably to the several degrees of interest every one
had in the death of this fair innocent virgin, and having, in the other
figures, laid out the utmost power of his art, when he came to that of
her father, he drew him with a veil over his face, meaning thereby that
no kind of countenance was capable of expressing such a degree of sorrow.
Which is also the reason why the poets feign the miserable mother, Niobe,
having first lost seven sons, and then afterwards as many daughters
(overwhelmed with her losses), to have been at last transformed into a
rock--

"Diriguisse malis,"

["Petrified with her misfortunes."--Ovid, Met., vi. 304.]

thereby to express that melancholic, dumb, and deaf stupefaction, which
benumbs all our faculties, when oppressed with accidents greater than we
are able to bear. And, indeed, the violence and impression of an
excessive grief must of necessity astonish the soul, and wholly deprive
her of her ordinary functions: as it happens to every one of us, who,
upon any sudden alarm of very ill news, find ourselves surprised,
stupefied, and in a manner deprived of all power of motion, so that the
soul, beginning to vent itself in tears and lamentations, seems to free
and disengage itself from the sudden oppression, and to have obtained
some room to work itself out at greater liberty.

"Et via vix tandem voci laxata dolore est."

["And at length and with difficulty is a passage opened by grief for
utterance."--AEneid, xi. 151.]

In the war that Ferdinand made upon the widow of King John of Hungary,
about Buda, a man-at-arms was particularly taken notice of by every one
for his singular gallant behaviour in a certain encounter; and, unknown,
highly commended, and lamented, being left dead upon the place: but by
none so much as by Raisciac, a German lord, who was infinitely enamoured
of so rare a valour. The body being brought off, and the count, with the
common curiosity coming to view it, the armour was no sooner taken off
but he immediately knew him to be his own son, a thing that added a
second blow to the compassion of all the beholders; only he, without
uttering a word, or turning away his eyes from the woeful object, st