Kames, Henry Home: Elements Of Criticism (Vol. 1) (Basil: Printed and sold by J. J. Tourneisen, 1795) [VD18 90784588]

244 GRANDEUR AND SUBLIMITY. Ch. IV.
S ejanus. ——--— Great and high
The world knows only two, that’s Rome and I.
My roof receives me not ? ’tis air I tread.
And at each step I feel my advanc’d head
Knock out a Rar in heav’n.
Sejanus , Benjonfon, att, 5.
A writer who has no natural elevation of mind,
deviates readily into bombast : he strains above
his natural powers ; and the violent effort carries
him beyond the bounds of propriety. Boileau ex-
presses this happily :
L’autre a peur de tamper, il se perd dans la nue *7.
The lame author, Ben Jonson, abounds in the
bombast :
-- The mother ,
Th1 expulsed Apicata , finds them there ;
"Whom when lhe saw lie spread on the degrees,
After a world of sury on herself.
Tearing her hair , defacing of her face ,
Beating her breafts and womb , kneeling amaz’d,
Crying to heav’n, then to them ; at last
Her drowned voice got up above her woes :
And with such black and bitter execrations,
( As might affright the gods , and force the sun
Run backward to the east ; nay, make the old
Deformed chaos rise again t’o’erwhelm

7 L’art poet, chant. I. I, 68.