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

6. The MACROLOGY and PLEONASM

are as generally coupled, as 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 tle pride of fields, The food of armies and fupport of wars. Refufe of fwords, and gleanings of a fight, Leffen his numbers, and contract his haft: 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 verse. Divide-and part-the fever'd World—in two. With ten thousand others equally mufical, and plentifully flowing thro' moft of our celebrated modern Poems.

CHAP. XII.

Of Expreffion, and the several 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 becomes vulgar; for obfcurity beftows a caft of the wonderful, and throws an oracular dignity upon a piece which hath no meaning.

*

For example, fometimes use the wrong Number; The Sword and Peftilence at once devours, inftead of devour. Sometimes the wrong Cafe; And who more fit to footh the God than thee? inftead of thou And rather than fay, Thetis faw Achilles weep, he heard him weep.

:

We must be exceeding careful in two things: first, in the Choice of low Words: fecondly, in the feber and orderly way of ranging them. Many of our poets are naturally blefs'd with this talent, infomuch that they are in the circumftance of that honest Citizen, who had made Profe all his life without knowing it. Let verfes run in this manner, juft to be a vehicle to the words: (I take them from my last cited author, who, tho' otherwife by no means of our rank, feemed once in his life to have a mind to be fimple.)

+ If not, a prize I will myself decree,
From him, or him, or else perhaps from thee.

full of Days was he;

Two ages paft, he liv'd the third to fee.

Ti. Hom, Il. i.

Idem, p. 17.

ン

+ Ti. Hom. II. i. p. 11.

$ The

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

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

Then let

my mother once be ruľd by me, Tho' much more wife than I pretend to be.

Or thefe of the fame hand.

SI leave the arts of poetry and verfe

To them that practise them with more fuccefs:
Of greater truths I now prepare to tell,

And fo at once, dear friend and muse, farewel.

Sometimes a fingle Word will 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 fearch'd ribs the hot Contagion fry'd,
And in that defcription 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.

++ 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,

He from the clouds does the fweet liquor fqueeze,
That chears the Foreft and the Garden trees.

+ P. 34.

§ Tonf. Mifc. 120 vol. iv. p. 292, fourth Edit. | Pr.

* Idem, p. 19.

P. 38.

Arthur, p. 151.

++ Job, 263.

‡‡ Id. Job, 264.

Tonf. Mifc. vol. vi. p. 119.

It is also useful to employ Technical Terms, which eftrange your ftyle from the great and general ideas of nature: and the higher your fubject is, the lower should you fearch into mechanicks for your expreffion. If you defcribe the garment of an angel, fay that his * Linen was finely fpun, and bleached on the ba py Plains. † Call an army of angels, Angelic Cuiraffes, and, if you have occafion to mention a number of misfortunes, ftyle them

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 Lowet of vegetables are most 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 thousand
kifes,

As if the willing branches ftrove

To beautify and hide the grove,

which indeed moft branches do.) But this is ftill

excelled by our Laureat,

* Branches in branches twin'd compofe the grove,
And fhoot and Spread, and bloffem into love.
The trembling palms their mutual vows repeat,
And bending poplars bending poplars meet.
The diftant plantanes feem to prefs more nigh,
And to the fighing alders, alders figh.

Hear alfo our Homer.

+ His Robe of State is form'd of light refin'd,
An endless Train of luftre fpreads behind.
His throne's of bright compacted Glory made,
With Pearl celeftial, and with Gems inlaid :
Whence Floods of joy, and Seas of Splendor flow,
On all th' angelic gazing throng below.

This does in as peculiar a manner become the low in wit, as a pert air does the low in ftature. Mr. Thomas Brown, the author of the Lmdon Spy, and all the Spies and Trips in general, are herein to be diligently ftudied: In Verfe Mr. Cibber's Prologues.

But the beauty and energy of it is never fo confpicuous, as when it is employed in Modernizing and Adapting to the Taste of the Times the works of the Antients. This we rightly phrafe Doing them into English, and Making them English; two expreffions of great Propriety, the one denoting our Neglect of the Manner how, the other the Force and Compulfion with which it is brought about. It is by virtue of this Style that Tacitus talks like a Coffee-House Politician, Jofephus like the British Gazetteer, Tully is as fhort and fmart as Seneca or Mr. Afgill, Marcus Aurelius is excellent at

Guardian, 12m0 127.

+ Blackm. Pf. civ.

1

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