and then rise upon their fins, and fly out of the profund; but their wings are soon dry, and they drop down to the bottom. G. S. A. H. C. G3.

2. The Swallows are authors skimming and fluttering up and agility is employed to catch flies.

H.

that are eternally down, but all their L. T. W. P. Lord

L. T.

3. The Ostriches are such, whose heaviness rarely permits them to raise themselves from the ground; their wings are of no use to lift them up; and their motion is between flying and walking; but then they run very fast. D. F. L. E. The Hon. E. H.

4. The Parrots are they that repeat another's words, in such a hoarse odd voice, as makes them seem their W. B. W. H. C. C. The Reverend D. D.

own.

5. The Didappers are authors that keep themselves long out of sight, under water, and come up now and then where you least expected them. L. W. Esq. The Hon. Sir W. Young.

G. D.

6. The Porpoises are unwieldy and big; they put all their numbers into a great turmoil and tempest, but whenever they appear in plain light (which is seldom) they are only shapeless and ugly monsters. I. D. C. G. I. O.

7. The Frogs are such as can neither walk nor fly, but can leap and bound to admiration: they live gene

loud clamours against our author by his introduction of these initial letters, which he in vain asserted were placed at random, and meant no particular writers which was not believed. These initial letters cannot now be authentically filled up.-Warton.

:

3 It was the intention of the author that the reader should fill up these initials according to his own ideas.

rally in the bottom of a ditch, and make a great noise whenever they thrust their heads above water. E. W. I. M., Esq. T. D., Gent.

8. The Eels are obscure authors, that wrap themselves up in their own mud, but are mighty nimble and pert. L. W. L. T. P. M. General C.

9. The Tortoises are slow aud chill, and, like pastoral writers, delight much in gardens: they have for the most part a fine embroidered shell, and underneath it a heavy lump. A. P. W. B. L. E. The Right Hon. E. of S.

These are the chief characteristics of the Bathos, and in each of these kinds we have the comfort to be blessed with sundry and manifold choice spirits in this our island.

CHAPTER VII.

OF THE PROFUND, WHEN IT CONSISTS IN THE
THOUGHT.

WE have already laid down the principles upon which our author is to proceed, and the manner of forming his thought by familiarizing his mind to the lowest objects; to which it may be added, that vulgar conversation will greatly contribute. There is no question but the garret or the printer's boy may often be discerned in the compositions made in such scenes and company; and much of Mr. Curl himself has been insensibly infused into the works of his learned

writers.

The physician, by the study and inspection of urine and ordure, approves himself in the science; and in like sort should our author accustom and exercise his imagination upon the dregs of nature.

This will render his thoughts truly and fundamentally low, and carry him many fathoms beyond mediocrity. For, certain it is (though some lukewarm heads imagine they may be safe by temporizing between the extremes) that where there is not a triticalness or mediocrity in the thought, it can never be sunk into the genuine and perfect Bathos, by the most elaborate low expression: it can, at most, be only carefully obscured, or metaphorically debased. But it is the thought alone that strikes, and gives the whole that spirit, which we admire and stare at. For instance, in that ingenious piece on a lady's drinking the Bath

waters:

She drinks! She drinks! Behold the matchless dame ! To her 'tis water, but to us 'tis flame:

Thus fire is water, water fire by turns,

And the same stream at once both cools and burns 4.

What can be more easy and unaffected than the diction of these verses? It is the turn of thought alone, and the variety of imagination, that charm and surprise us. And when the same lady goes into the bath, the thought (as in justness it ought) goes still deeper:

Venus beheld her, 'midst her crowd of slaves,

And thought herself just risen from the waves 5.

4 Anon.-Warburton.

Mr. Spence informed me that this passage, and many other ridiculous ones, in this treatise, were quoted from our poet's own early pieces, particularly his epic poem called Alcander.

When Voltaire first brought on the stage his Mariamne, 1722, in which Herod gave her a cup of poison, the Parterre cried out, "La Reine boit," and the play was damned.Warton.

5 Anon.-Warburton.

How much out of the way of common sense is this reflection of Venus, not knowing herself from the lady?

Of the same nature is that noble mistake of a frighted stag in full chase, who (saith the poet) Hears his own feet, and thinks they sound like more, And fears the hind feet will o'ertake the fore.

So astonishing as these are, they yield to the following, which is profundity itself:

None but himself can be his parallel.

Unless it may seem borrowed from the thought of that master of a show in Smithfield, who writ in large letters, over the picture of his elephant:

This is the greatest elephant in the world, except himself.

However, our next instance is certainly an original: speaking of a beautiful infant:

So fair thou art, that if great Cupid be
A child, as poets say, sure thou art he,
Fair Venus would mistake thee for her own,
Did not thy eyes proclaim thee not her son.
There all the lightnings of thy mother's shine,
And with a fatal brightness kill in thine.

First he is Cupid, then he is not Cupid; first Venus would mistake him, then she would not mistake him; next his eyes are his mother's, and lastly they are not his mother's, but his own.

6 Theobald, Double Falsehood.—Warburton.

It is a little remarkable that this line of Theobald, which is thought to be the master-piece of absurdity, is evidently copied from a line of Seneca, in the Hercules Furens :

Another author, describing a poet that shines forth amidst a circle of critics:

Thus Phoebus through the Zodiac takes his way,
And amid monsters rises into day.

The

What a peculiarity is here of invention? author's pencil, like the wand of Circe, turns all into monsters at a stroke. A great genius takes things in the lump, without stopping at minute considerations. In vain might the ram, the bull, the goat, the lion, the crab, the scorpion, the fishes, all stand in his way, as mere natural animals, much more might it be pleaded that a pair of scales, an old man, and two innocent children were no monsters. There were only the centaur and the maid that could be esteemed out of nature. But what of that? with a boldness peculiar to these daring geniuses, what he found not monsters, he made so.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE PROFUND, CONSISTING IN THE CIRCUMSTANCES, AND OF AMPLIFICATION AND PERIPHRASE IN GENERAL.

WHAT in great measure distinguishes other writers from ours, is their choosing and separating such circumstances in a description as ennoble or elevate the subject.

The circumstances which are most natural are obvious, therefore not astonishing or peculiar. But those that are far-fetched, or unexpected, or hardly compatible, will surprise prodigiously. These therefore we must principally hunt out; but above all, preserve a laudable

VOL. V.

R