He has taught Samson the tales of Circe, and the Syrens, at which he
apparently hints in his colloquy with Dalila:
--I know thy trains,
Though dearly to my cost, thy gins, and toils;
Thy fair _enchanted cup_, and _warbling charms_
No more on me have pow'r.
But the grossest errour of this kind is the solemn introduction of the
Phoenix in the last scene; which is faulty, not only as it is
incongruous to the personage to whom it is ascribed, but as it is so
evidently contrary to reason and nature, that it ought never to be
mentioned but as a fable in any serious poem:
--Virtue giv'n for lost,
Deprest, and overthrown, as seem'd,
Like that self-begotten bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows nor third,
And lay ere while a holocaust,
From out her ashy womb now teem'd,
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deem'd,
And though her body die, her fame survives
A secular bird, ages of lives.
Another species of impropriety is the unsuitableness of thoughts to the
general character of the poem. The seriousness and solemnity of tragedy
necessarily reject all pointed or epigrammatical expressions, all remote
conceits and opposition of ideas.
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