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Or in pretty drawling words like these:

All men his tomb, all men his sons adore,
And his sons' sons, till there shall be no more.*

The rising sun our grief did see,

The setting sun did see the same, While wretched we remembered thee, O Sion, Sion, lovely name.†

6. THE MACROLOGY AND PLEONASM

are generally coupled, as a lean rabbit with a fat one; 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.

* T. Cook, Poems.

+ Ibid.

Warburton.

Even such pure writers as Catullus, Lucretius, and Horace, have sometimes been guilty of Pleonasms; of which there are examples in the Miscell. Observations of Jortin, p. 37, vol. ii. Of this sort of style Quintilian, as usual, speaks elegantly: “ Ut corpora non robore sed valetudine inflantur; et recto itinere lapsi, plerumque divertunt. Erit ergo obscurior, quo quisque deterior."

66

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.

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 verse.†

Divide-and part-the sever'd world—in two.‡

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

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

CHAP. 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 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 devour.* 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 man*Ti. Hom. Il. i.

Warburton.

+ 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.

ner, 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.*
—full of days was he;

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

The king of forty kings, and honour'd more
By mighty Jove than e'er was king before.‡

That I may know, if thou my pray'r deny,
The most despis'd of all the Gods am 1.§

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:

I leave the arts of poetry and verse

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

p. 11.

+ Idem, p. 17.

Warburton.

* Ti. Hom. II. i. Ti. Hom. II. i. p. 19. § P. 34. || 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.

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,||

* Pr. Arthur, p. 151.

Job, 263.

Tons. Misc. vol. vi. p. 119.

§ Id. Job, 264.

Warburton. Warburton.

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 left hand does the calking iron guide,

The rattling mallet with the right they lift.

With

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