nor is it a wonder, the superfluity of words, and vacuity of sense, being just the same, thing. I am pleased to see one of our greatest adversaries employ this figure:

The growth of meadows, and the pride of fields,
The food of armies, and support of wars,
Refuse of swords, and gleanings of a fight,
Lessen his numbers, and contract his host.
Where'er his friends retire, or foes succeed,
Cover'd with tempests, and in oceans drown'd'.
Of all which the perfection is

THE TAUTOLOGY.

Break thro' the billows, and-divide the main.
In smoother numbers, and—in softer verse3.

Divide and part-the sever'd world-in two9.

With ten thousand others equally musical, and plentifully flowing through most of our celebrated modern

poems.

CHAPTER XII.

OF EXPRESSION, AND THE SEVERAL SORTS OF STYLE OF THE PRESENT AGE.

THE expression is adequate, when it is proportionably low to the profundity of the thought. It must not be

Again, "Ut staturâ breves in digitos eriguntur, et plura infirmi minantur. -Ne oneretur tamen verbis multis; nam sit longa et impedita oratio, ut eam judices similem agmini totidem lixas habenti quot milites; in quo et numerus est duplex, nec duplum virium." The six English lines here quoted are a severe stroke on Addison's Campaign.-Warton.

7 Camp.-Warburton.

Tons. Misc. 12mo. vol. iv. p. 291, 4th edition.-Warburton. ? Ibid, vol. vi. p. 121.-Warburton.

always grammatical, lest it appear pedantic and ungentlemanly; nor too clear, for fear it become vulgar; for obscurity bestows a cast of the wonderful, and throws an oracular dignity upon a piece which hath no meaning.

For example, sometimes use the wrong number; the sword and pestilence at once devours; instead of devour1. Sometimes the wrong case; and who more fit to sooth the God than thee? instead of thou. And rather than say: Thetis saw Achilles weep: she heard him weep.

We must be exceeding careful in two things: first, in the choice of low words; secondly, in the sober and orderly way of ranging them. Many of our poets are naturally blessed with this talent, insomuch that they are in the circumstance of that honest citizen, who had made prose all his life without knowing it. Let verses run in this manner, just to be a vehicle to the words: I take them from my last cited author, who, though otherwise by no means of our rank, seemed once in his life to have a mind to be simple.

If not, a prize I will myself decree,

From him, or him, or else perhaps from thee 3. -full of days was he;

Two ages past, he liv'd the third to see1.

The king of forty kings, and honour'd more
By mighty Jove than e'er was king before 5.
That I may know, if thou my pray'r deny,
The most despis'd of all the Gods am 16.

1 Ti. Hom. II. i.-Warburton.

2 Our author himself has more than once fallen into this fault, as hath been observed in the notes of this edition, and of which Dr. Lowth in his Grammar mentions many instances.-Warton.

3 Ti. Hom. Il. i. p. 11.

Ti. Hom. Il. i. p..

19,

4 Idem, p. 17.-Warburton.

6 P. 34.

Then let my mother once be rul'd by me,
Though much more wise than I pretend to be'.

Or these of the same hand 8:

I leave the arts of poetry and verse

9

To them that practise them with more success:

Of greater truths I now prepare to tell,

And so at once, dear friend and muse, farewell'.

Sometimes a single word would vulgarize a poetical idea; as where a ship set on fire owes all the spirit of the Bathos to one choice word that ends the line: And his scorch'd ribs the hot contagion fried.

And in that description of a world in ruins: Should the whole frame of nature round him break, He unconcern'd would hear the mighty crack".

So also in these:

Beasts tame and savage to the river's brink,
Come, from the fields and wild abodes-to drink.

Frequently two or three words will do it effectually :
He from the clouds does the sweet liquor squeeze,
That cheers the forest and the garden trees.

It is also useful to employ technical terms, which

7 Ti. Hom. II. i. p. 38.-Warburton.

Asserting plainly, that the first book of the Iliad, published by Tickell, was really the work of Addison.-Warton.

? These are the two last feeble lines of Addison's epistle to Sacheverell; and the two preceding ones are as bad.-Warton.

Tons. Misc. 12mo. vol. iv. p. 292, fourth edition.-Warburton.

2 Pr. Arthur, p. 151. 3 Tons. Misc. vol. vi. p. 119.-Warburton. 4 Job, 263. 5 Id. Job, 264.-Warburton.

6 No passage in Blackmore himself can exceed the vulgarity of introducing technical terms and sea language, more than the following lines of the 146, 147, and 148 stanzas of Dryden's Annus Mirabilis :

CXLVI.

So here some pick out bullets from the sides,
Some drive old oakum thro' each seam and rift.

[Their

estrange your style from the great and general ideas of nature and the higher your subject is, the lower should you search into mechanics for your expression. If you describe the garment of an angel, say that his Linen was finely spun, and bleached on the happy plains'. Call an army of angels, angelic cuirassiers; and if you have occasion to mention a number of misfortunes, style them

Fresh troops of pains, and regimented woes.

treated, and the

STYLE is divided by the rhetoricians into the proper and the figured. Of the figured we have already proper is what our authors have nothing to do with. Of styles we shall mention only the principal which owe to the moderns, either their chief improvement, or entire invention.

1. THE FLORID STYLE,

than which none is more proper to the Bathos, as flowers which are the lowest of vegetables, are most gaudy, and do many times grow in great plenty at the bottoms of ponds and ditches.

A fine writer in this kind presents you with the following posy:

Their left hand does the calking iron guide,
The rattling mallet with the right they lift.

CXLVII.

With boiling pitch another near at hand

From friendly Sweden brought, the seams instops;
Which well laid o'er, the salt sea waves withstand,
And shake them from the rising beak in drops.

CXLVIII.

Some the gall'd ropes with dauby marling blind,
Or sear-cloth mash with strong tarpauling coats,
To try new shrouds one mounts into the wind,
And one below their ease or stiffness notes."

Who would think it possible that these lines, and there are many such to be found in his works, could have been written by the author of Palamon and Arcite, and the Ode on St. Cecilia's Day ?-Warton.

7 Prince Arthur, p. 19. 8 Ibid. p. 339. 9

Job, p. 86.-Warburton.

The groves appear all dress'd with wreaths of flowers,
And from their leaves drop aromatic showers,
Whose fragrant heads in mystic twines above
Exchange their sweets, and mix with thousand kisses,
As if the willing branches strove1

To beautify and shade the grove,

which indeed most branches do. But this is still ex

celled by our Laureat:

Branches in branches twin'd compose the grove,

And shoot and spread, and blossom into love.
The trembling palms their mutual vows repeat,
And bending poplars bending poplars meet.
The distant plantains seem to press more nigh,
And to the sighing alders, alders sigh3.

Hear also our Homer:

His robe of state is form'd of light refin'd,
An endless train of lustre spreads behind.
His throne's of bright compacted glory made,
With pearl celestial, and with gems inlaid:
Whence floods of joy, and seas of splendor flow,
On all th' angelic gazing throng below*.

2. THE PERT STYLE.

This does in a peculiar manner become the low in wit, as a pert air does the low in stature. Mr. Thomas Brown, the author of the London Spy, and all the Spies and Trips in general, are herein to be diligently studied in verse, Mr. Cibber's Prologues.

1 It is surprising to find so false and florid a conceit as is contained in the following lines, in a writer generally so chaste and correct as

Addison:

66

While here the vine on hills of ruins climbs,
Industrious to conceal great Bourbon's crimes." Campaign.—

2 Behn's Poems, p. 2.—Warburton. 3 Guardian, 12mo, 127.

Warton.

4 Blackm. Ps. civ.-Warburton.