Note 117 — MOUNT ETNA. WRITTEN AFTER HAVING READ MR BRYDONE’S TOUR THROUGH SICILY.
Reading edition
l. 8. Bason thrown—This is Mr Brydone’s own simile, and beyond any other which could have been chosen, brings to the mind’s eye these peculiar effects of vision. Poets and orators often find themselves obliged to accommodate great things to our perception, by comparing them to small ones. These comparisons are often happy, and sometimes sublime.
“Thou spreadest out the heavens like a curtain.”
Milton compares the fallen angels in Pandemonium to bees, and Homer, Menelaus, guarding the dead body of Patroclus, to a fly. Instances of this sort in the noblest writers are innumerable.