Or in pretty drawling words like thefe,

• All men his tomb, all men his fons adore, And his fon's fons till there fhall be no more. 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 a lean rabbit with a fat one; nor is it a wonder, the fuperfluity of words and vacuity of fenfe, being juft the fame thing. I am pleafed to fee one of our greatest adverfaries employ this figure.

The growth of meadows, and the pride of fields
The food of armies and support of wars :
Refufe of fwords, and gleanings of a fight,
Leffen his numbers, and contract his hoft.
Where'er his friends retire, or foes fucceed,
Cover'd with Tempests, and in oceans drown'a.
Of all which the Perfection is

The TAUTOLOGY.

"Break thro' the billows, and-divide the main In fmoother numbers, and—in fofter verfe,

1 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 Expreflion, and the several Sorts of Style of the prefent Age.

HE Expreffion is adequate, when it is propor

TH

tionably 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 obfcurity beftows a caft of the wonderful, and throws an oracular dignity upon a piece which hath no meaning.

For example, fometimes ufe the wrong Number; The ford and Peftilence at once devours, inftead of devour. * Sometimes the wrong Cafe; And who more fit to footh the God than thee? instead 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 fober and k Ti. Hom. II. i.

i ibid. Vol. vi. p. 121.

orderly way of ranging them. Many of our Poets are naturally bleffed 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 laft cited author, who, tho' otherwise 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,

m

full of Days was he;

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

The king of forty kings, and honour'd more
Ey mighty Jove 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 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 practise them with more fuccefs:

1 Ti. Hom. II. i. p. i1. P P. 38.

o P. 34. fourth Edit.

.m. Idem. p. 17.

n Idem. p. 19.'

q Tonf. Mifc. 120 vol. iv. p. 292.

Of greater truths I now prepare to tell,

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

Sometimes a fingle Word will vulgarise a poetical idea; as where a Ship fet on fire owes all the Spirit of the Bathos to one choice word that ends the line.

▾ And his fcorch'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 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,

"He from the clouds does the fweet liquor squeeze, That chears the Forest and the Garden trees.

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 fhould you fearch into mechanicks for your expreffion. If you describe the garment of an angel, fay that his Linen was finely spun, and bleached on the s Tonf. Mifc. vol. vi. p. 119.

Pr. Arth. p. 151.

Job, 263.

u ld, Job, 264.

* Pr. Arthur, p. 19.

happy Plains, y Call an army of Angels, Angelic Cuiraffers, and, if you have occafion to mention a number of misfortunes, style 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 altready treated, and the Proper is what our authors have nothing to do with. Of Styles we shall men tion 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 bottom of Ponds and Ditches.

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

a The

groves appear all dreft with wreaths of flowers, And from their leaves drop aromatic showers, Whofe fragrant heads in myflic trines above, Exchang'd their fweets, and mix'd with thousand

kiffes,

y Ibid. p. 339.

z Job, p. 86.

a Behn's Poems, p. 2.