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* Envoys and Agents, who by my command
Refide in Palestina's land,

To

To whom commiffions I have given,
manage there the interefts of heaven :
Ye holy heralds, who proclaim

Or war or peace, in mine your master's name:
Te pioneers of heaven, prepare a road,
Make it plain, direct and broad;
For I in perfon will my people head;
For the divine deliverer

Will on his march in majesty appear,
And needs the aid of no confed'rate power.
Under the article of the Confounding, we rank,
1. The MIXTURE OF FIGURES,

which raises so many images, as to give you no image at all. But its principal beauty is when it gives an idea juft oppofite to what it seemed meant to defcribe. Thus an ingenious artist painting the Spring, talks of a Snow of Blossoms, and thereby raises an unexpected picture of Winter. Of this fort is the following:

"The gaping clouds pour lakes of fulphur down, Whofe livid flafkes fuckning funbeams drown. What a noble Confufion? clouds, lakes, brimftone, flames, fun-beams, gaping, pouring, fickning, drowning! all in two lines.

2. The JARGON.

Thy head fhall rife, tho' buried in the dust,
And midji the clouds his glittering turrets thrust.

← Blackm. Ifa. c. xl. f Pr. Arthur, p. 37. Job, p. 107.

Quare, What are the glittering turrets of a man's head?

-h

1 Upon the shore, as frequent as the fand,

To meet the Prince, the glad Dimetians ftand.

Quare, Where thefe Dimetians stood? and of what fize they were? Add alfo to the Jargon fuch as the following.

'Deftruction's empire shall no longer laft, And Defolation lye for ever waste.

*Here Niobe, fad mother, makes her moan, And feems converted to a fione in fione.

But for Variegation, nothing is more useful than

3.

The PARANOMASIA, or PUN, where a Word, like the tongue of a jackdaw, fpeaks twice as much by being split: As this of Mr. Dennis',

Bullets that wound, like Parthians, as they fly; or this excellent one of Mr. Welfted",

Behold the Virgin lye

Naked, and only cover'd by the Sky.

To which thou may'ft add,

To fee her beauties no man needs to floop,
She has the whole Horizon for her boop.

h Pr. Arthur, p. 157. i Job, p. 89. 1 Poems 1693, p. 13.

Poems.

Acon and Lavin.

* T. Cook, m Welfted, Poems,

4. The ANTITHESIS, OF SEE-Saw, whereby Contraries and Oppofitions are balanced in fuch a way, as to caufe a reader to remain fufpended between them, to his exceeding delight and recreation. Such are these, on a lady who made herself appear out of fize, by hiding a young princess under her cloaths.

While the kind nymph changing her faultless fhape, Becomes unhandfome, handsomely to fcape.

On the Maids of Honour in mourning: • Sadly they charm, and difmally they please. His eyes fo bright

P

Let in the object and let out the light.

The Gods look pale to fee us look fo red.

green.

The Fairies and their Queen
In mantles blue came tripping o'er the
· All nature felt a reverential fhock,
The fea flood ftill to see the mountains rock.

" Waller,

Alex.

• Steel on Queen Mary. › Quarles. Lee,

Phil. Paft. • Blackm. Job, p. 176.

CHA P. XI.

The Figures continued: Of the Magnifying and Diminishing Figures.

A

Genuine Writer of the Profund will take care never to magnify any object without clouding it at the fame time: His thought will appear in a true mift, and very unlike what is in nature. It must always be remembered that darkness is an effential quality of the Profund, or, if there chance to be a glimmering, it must be as Milton expreffes it,

No light, but rather darkness vifible.

The chief Figure of this fort is,
1. The HYPERBOLE, or Impoffible.

For instance, of a Lion;

'He roar'd fo loud, and look'd fo wondrous grim, His very shadow durft not follow him.

Of a Lady at Dinner.

The filver whiteness that adorns thy neck,
Sullies the plate, and makes the napkin black.

Of the fame.

• Th' obfcureness of her birth Cannot eclipfe the luftre of her eyes, Which make her all one light.

* Vet. Aut.

Theob. Double Falfhood.

Of a Bull-baiting.

"Up to the Stars the sprawling maftives fly, And add new monjters to the frighted sky. Of a scene of Misery.

* Behold a Scene of mifery and woe!

Here Argus foon might weep himself quite blind,
Ev'n tho' be bad Briareus' bundred hands
To wipe thofe hundred eyes.

And that modest request of two absent lovers:
Ye Gods! annihilate but Space and Time,
And make two lovers happy.

2. The PERIPHRASIS, which the Moderns call the Circumbendibus, whereof we have given examples in the ninth chapter, and shall again in the twelfth.

be

To the fame clafs of the Magnifying may referred the following, which are fo excellently modern, that we have yet no name for them. In defcribing a country prospect,

"I'd call them mountains, but can't call them fo, For fear to wrong them with a name too low; While the fair vales beneath fo bumbly lie, That even humble feems a term too high.

III. The third Class remains, of the Diminishing Figures: And 1. the ANTICLIMAX, where the fecond line drops quite fhort of the first, than which nothing creates greater furprize.