Of all which the Perfection is

The TAUTOLOGY.

* Break thro' the billows, and-divide the main. In fmoother numbers, and-in fofter verfe. "Divide—and part-the fever'dWorld—in two.

With ten thousand others equally musical, and plentifully flowing thro' most of our celebrated modern Poems.

CHAP. XII.

Of Expreffion, and the feveral Sorts of Style of the Present Age.

TH

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 become vulgar; for obfcurity bestows 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? instead

Tonf. Mifc. 12mo. vol. iv. p. 291. 4th Edit.
Ibid. vol. vi. p. 121. * Ti. Hom. Il. i.

of thou: And rather than say, Thetis faw Achilles weep, the beard him weep.

We must be exceeding careful in two things: firft, in the Choice of low Words: fecondly, in the fober and orderly way of ranging them. Many of our Poets are naturally blefs'd with this talent, infomuch that they are in the circumstance of that honeft 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, though 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 elfe perhaps from thee.
full of days was he;

y

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

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 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

Of greater truths I now prepare to tell,
And fo at once, dear friend and mufe, farewel.

Sometimes a fingle Word will vulgarize 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 description of a World in ruins:

f

Should the whole frame of nature round him break,
He unconcern'd would hear the mighty Crack.

So alfo in thefe:

Beals 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.

It is alfo ufeful 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 fpun, and bleach'd on the happy plains. 1 Call

Pr. Arthur, p. 151. f Job, 263.

1 Ibid. p. 339.

IJ. Job, 24.

Tonf, Mifc. vol. vi. p. 119. b Prince Arthur, p. 19.

an army of angels, Angelic Cuiraffiers, and, if you have occafion to mention a number of miffortunes, ftyle them

k

* 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 shall 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 Loweft of vegetables, are moft Gaudy, and do many times grow in great plenty at the bottom of Ponds and Ditches.

A fine writer in this kind prefents 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 thoufand kifles,

As if the willing branches ftrove

To beautify and fhade the grove,

(which indeed moft branches do.) But this is ftill excelled by our Laureat:

* Job, p. 86.

1 Behn's Poems, p. 2.

m

Branches in branches twin'd compofe the grove,
And shoot and spread, and blossom into love.
The trembling palms their mutual vows repeat,
And bending poplars bending poplars meet.
The diftant platanes 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 luflre 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.

2. The PERT Style.

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 London Spy, and all the Spies and Trips in general, are herein to be diligently ftudied: In Verfe Mr. Cilber's Pro'ogues.

But the beauty and energy of it is never fo confpicuous, as when it is employed in Modernizing and Adapting to the Tale of the Times the works of the Ancients. 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

Guardian, 12° 127.

n Blackm. Pf. civ.