Note 35 — HYLAS AND ÆGON.

Were a man to meet with such a nondescript monster as the following, viz.: "Love out of Mount Ætna by a Whirlwind," he would suppose himself reading the Racing Calendar. Yet this hybrid creature is one of the many zoological monsters to whom the Pastorals introduce us.—De Quincy.

Sentiments like these, as they have no ground in nature, are of little value in any poem, but in pastoral they are particularly liable to censure, because it wants that exaltation above common life, which in tragic or heroic writings often reconciles us to bold flights and daring figures.—Johnson.