Or in pretty drawling words like these,

All men his tomb, all men his fons adore,
And his fon's fons till there shall be no more.
The rifing fun our grief did fee,

The fetting fun did fee the fame,
While wretched we remembred thee,
f O Sion, Sion, lovely name.

6. The MACROLOGY and PLEONASM are as generally coupled, as a lean rabbit with a fat one; nor is it a wonder, the fuperfluity of words and vacuity of fenfe, being just the fame thing. I am pleased to fee one of our greatest adverfaries employ this figure.

The growth of meadows, and the pride of fields,
The food of armies and fupport of wars.
Refufe of fwords, and gleanings of a fight,
Leffen bis numbers, and contract his boft.
Where'er his friends retire, or foes fucceed,
Cover'd with Tempefts, and in oceans drown'd.

Of all which the Perfection is

The TAUTOLOGY,

Break thro' the billows, and divide the main
In fmoother numbers, and in fofter verfe.

f Ibid.

• Camp.

e T. Cook, Poems.
Tonfc, Mifc, 12o vol. iv. p, 291., 4th Edit,

Divide--and part--the fever'd World--in two.-With ten thousand others equally mufical, and plentifully flowing thro' most of our celebrated modern Poems.

CHA P. XII.

Of Expreffion, and the feveral Sorts of Style of the prefent Age.

T

HE Expreffion is adequate, when it is proportionably low to the Profundity of the Thought. It must not be always Grammatical, left 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, fometimes ufe the wrong Num. ber; The Sword and Peftilence at once devours, inftead of devour. * Sometimes the wrong Cafe; And who more fit to footh the Cod than thee? inftead of thou: And rather than fay, Thetis faw Achilles weep, fhe heard him weep.

We must be exceeding careful in two things;

Ibid. Vol, vi. p. 121.

* Ti, Hom. II, i.

Many of talent, in

firft, in the Choice of love Words: fecondly, in the Jober and orderly way of ranging them. our Poets are naturally bleffed with this fomuch that they are in the circumftance of that honeft Citizen, who had made Profe all his life. without knowing it. Let verfes run in this manner, just to be a vehicle to the words: (I take them from my laft cited author, who, tho' otherwife by no means of our rank, feemed once in his life to have a mind to be fimple.)

1

If not, a prize I will myself decree,

From him, or him, or else perhaps from thee.

Two ages paft, be liv'd the third to fee ↳ The king of forty kings, and honour3d more By mighty Jove than e'er was king before. • That I may know, if thou my praŷ'r deny, The most defpis'd of all the Gods am I.

19.

P Then let my mother once be rul'd by me,
Tho' much more wife than I pretend to be.

Or thefe of the fame hand.

I leave the arts of poetry and verfe`.

To them that practife them with more fuccefs:

Ti. Hom, Il. i. p. 11.

• P. 34. vol. iv. p. 292, fourth Edit.

m Idem. p. 17.

PP. 38.

л Idem. p

a Tonf. Mifc. 129

3

Of greater truths I now prepare to tell,

And fo at once, dear friend and mufe, farewel. Sometimes a fingle Word will vulgarife a peetical idea; as where a Ship fet on fire owes all the Spirit of the Bathos to one choice word that ends the line.

T

And his fcorch'd ribs the hot Contagion fry’d. And in that description of a World in ruins,

* Should the whole frame of nature round him break, He unconcern'd would bear the mighty Crack.

So alfo in thefe,

Beafts tame and favage to the river's brink Come, from the fields and wild abodes-to drink. Frequently two or three words will do it effectually,

u

He from the clouds does the fweet liquor squeeze,
That chears the Foreft and the Garden tress.

It is also useful to employ Technical Terms, which eftrange your style from the great and general ideas of nature and the higher your fubject is, the lower should you search into mechanicks for your expreffion. If you describe the garment of an angel, fay that his Linen was finely fpun, and bleach• Tonf. Misc. vol. vi. p. 119.

X

r Pr. Arthur, p. 151.

t Job, 263.

u Id. Job, 264.

* Prince Ar

Chur, p. 19.

ed on the happy Plains.

y Call an army of angels, Angelic Cuiraffiers, and, if you have occafion to mention a number of misfortunes, ftyle them

z Fresh Troops of Pains, and regimented Woes.

STYLE is divided by the Rhetoricians into the Proper and the Figured. Of the Figured we have already treated, and the Proper is what our authors have nothing to do with. Of Styles we fhall 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 Loweft of vegetables, are moft Gaudy, and do many times grow in great plenty at the bottom of Ponds and Ditches.

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

The groves appear all dreft with wreaths of flowers,
And from their leaves drop aromatic showers,
Whofe fragrant heads in myftic twines above,
Exchang'd their fweets, and mix'd with thoufand
kiffes,