Of all which the Perfection is

The TAUTOLOGY.

h 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.

CHA P. XII.

Of Expreffion, and the feveral 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 obscurity 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 Sword and Peftilence at once devcurs, inftead of devour. k Sometimes the wrong Cafe;

Tonf. Mifc. 12° vol. iv. p. 291. 4th Edit.
k Ti. Hom. Il. i.

P. 121.

+ R

i Ibid. vol. vi.

Lira why more dit to fisth the God than thee? instead And rather than fay, Thetis faw Achilles

-- the bound him weep.

We mait be exceeding careful in two things; 5. A in the Chiloe of low Words : fecondly, in the tom and any way of ranging them. Many of a. Pavs are naturally blefs'd with this talent, invanuch that they are in the circumftance of that Net Comes who had made Profe all his life what Toning it. Let verfes run in this manto a vehicle to the words: (I take my lit cited author, who, tho' othervers of our rank, feemed once in his

Te to have a mind to be fimple.)

Or these of the fame hand.

I 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 fcorch'd ribs the hot Contagion fry'd. And in that description of a World in ruins,

S

t

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

So alfo 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 sweet liquor squeeze, That chears the Foreft and the Garden trees.

It is also useful to employ Technical Terms, which estrange your style from the great and general ideas of nature and the higher your fubject is, the lower fhould you search into mechanicks for your expreffion. If you describe the garment of an an

Tonf. Mifc. 12 vol. iv. p. 292, fourth Edit.
Tonf. Mifc. vol. vi. p. 119.

thur, p. 151.

▾ Id. Job, 264. VOL. VI.

+ R 2

* Pr. Ar

Job, 263.

of

giin bay that his · Lut we jus fee, and ப Live bestbed on the beam Fizz. • Call an army angels, Apple Cambra, and you have occaSce to mention a number of misfortunes, ityle thea

* Frei Troops of Peiz, cui regimented Wis.

STL is dried by the Rhetoricians into the Froger and the Ford Of the Figured we have

arealy treated, and the Proper is what our au

thors have nothing to do with Of Series we shall

dly the Prinsiped which owe to the moderms either their chef Improvement, or entire

than which noce is more proper to the Bathos, as Bowers, which are the Lead of vegetables, are mot Gaudy, and do many times grow in great plenty in the bottom of Pinds and Ditches.

A fine writer in this kind prefents you with the following Pode:

gorous expeer 20 deg? with wreaths of flowers, bud from their kous drop aromatic flowers, 7 Program beads in my lie twines above, Isetang`d their peers, Ini mix'd with thousand

Prince Authur, p. 19• Behn's Poems, p. 2.

↑ Did. p. 339- ・ Job, p. 86.

As if the willing branches ftrove

To beautify and shade the grove,-

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

b 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 luftre spreads behind.
His throne's of bright compacted Glory made,
With Pearl celeftial, and with Gems inlaid :
Whence Floods of joy, and Seas of fplendor 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 studied: 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

Guardian, 12' 127.