"produced fo much butter, that, if he did not, he might "have washed his feet in it.” The enfuing defcription of hell is no less remarkable in the circumftances. In flaming heaps the raging ocean rolls, Could the most minute Dutch-painter have been more exact? how inimitably circumftantial is this also of a war-horse! His eye-balls burn, he wounds the Smoaking plain, Of certain cudgel-players. They brandifh high in air their threat'ning flaves, Who would not think the poet had paft his whole life at wakes in fuch laudable diverfions? fince he teaches us how to hold, nay, how to make a cudgel! Periphrafe is another great aid to prolixity; being a diffufed circumlocutory manner of expreffing a known idea, which should be fo myfteriously couched, as to give the reader the pleasure of gueffing what it is, that the author can poffibly mean; and a ttrange furprize when he finds it? The poet I last mentioned is incomparable in this fi gure. A waving fea of heads was round me spread, Here is a waving fea of heads, which, by a fresh ftream *Prince Arthur, p. 89. Prince Arthur, p. 197. of heads, grows to be a gazing deluge of heads. You come at laft to find, it means a great croud. How pretty and how genteel is the following! Nature's confectioner Whofe fuckets are moift alchymy: What is this, but a bee gathering honey? Little fren of the flage, Empty warbler, breathing lyre, Tuneful mischief, vocal spell.-t. Who would think, this was only a poor gentlewoman, that fang finely? We may define amplification to be making the most of a thought; it is the fpinning wheel of the bathos, which draws out and fpreads it into the fineft thread. There are amplifiers, who can extend half a dozen thin thoughts o ver a whole folio; but for which, the tale of many a vaft romance, and the fubftance of many a fair volume, might be reduced to the fize of a primmer. In the book of Job are these words, "Haft thou com. "manded the morning, and caufed the day-fpring to "know his place?" how is this extended by the most celebrated amplifier of our age? Canft thou fet forth th' etherial wines on high, The fame author hath amplified a paffage in the civ. Pfalm; "He looks on the earth, and it trembles. He touches the hills, and they finoke." Cleveland.†A. Philips to Cuzzona. ‡ Job, p. 108. The The hills forget they're fix'd, and in their fright You here fee the Fills not only trembling, but shaking off woods from their backs, to run the fafter: after this you are prefented with a foot-race of mountains and woods, where the woods diftance the mountains, that, like corpulent purfy fellows, come puffing and panting a vaft way behind them. CHA P. IX. Of imitation, and the manner of imitating. HAT the true authors of the profund are to imi tate diligently the examples in their own way, is not to be questioned, and that divers have, by this means, attained to a depth, whereunto their own weight could never have carried them, is evident by fundry inftances. Who fees not that De Foe was the poetical fon of Withers, Tate of Ogilby, E. Ward of John Taylor, and Eufden of Blackmore? Therefore when we fit down to write, let us bring fome great author to our mind, and afk ourselves this question; how would Sir Richard have faid this? do I exprefs myfelf as fimply as Ambrofe Philips or flow my numbers with the quiet thought leffnels of Mr Welfted? But it may feet fomewhat ftrange to affert, that our proficient fhould also read the works of those famous poets, who have excelled in the fublime: yet is not this a paradox. As Virgil is faid to have read Ennius, out of his dunghill to draw gold, fo may our author read Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden, for the contrary end, to bury their gold in his own dunghill. A true genius, when be finds any thing lofty or fhining in them, will have the fkill to bring it down, take off the glofs, or quite dif * Job, P. 267. charge charge the colour, by fome ingenious circumftance or periphrafe, fome addition or diminution, or by fome of those figures, the ufe of which we fhall fhew in our next chap ter. The book of Job is acknowleged to be iufiuitely fublime, and yet has not the father of the bathos reduced it in every page is there a paffage in all Virgil more painted up and laboured than the description of Ætma in the third Æneid? Horrificis juxta tonat Etna ruinis, Interdumque atrum prorumpit ad æthera nubem, (I beg pardon of the gentle English reader, and fuch of our writers as understand not Latin). Lo! how this is taken down by our British poet, by the fingle happy thought of throwing the mountain into a fit of the cholic. Etna, and all the burning mountains, find Horace, in fearch of the fublime, ftruck his head against the ftars; but Empedocles, to fathom the profund,threw himself into Etna. And who but would imagine our excellent modern had alfo been there, from this defcription? Imitation is of two forts; the firft is, when we force to our own purposes the thoughts of others; the fecond confifts in copying the imperfections or blemishes of celebrated authors. I have feen a play profefledly writ in Pr. Arthur, p. 75. + Sublimi feriam fidera vertice. G 3 the the file of Spakefpere; wherein the refemblance lay in one fingle line, And fo good morrow t'ye, good mafter lieutenant. And fundry poems, in imitation of Milton, where, with the utmost exactnels, and not fo much as one exception, nevertheless was conftantly nathless, embroidered was broidered, hermits were heremits, dildained was 'fdeigned, fhidy umbrageous, enterprize emprize, pagan paynin, pinion pennons, fweet dulcet, orchards orchats, bridge. work pontifical; nay, her was hir, and their was thir, through the whole poem. And, in very deed, there is no other way, by which the true modern poet could read to any purpole the works of fuch men as Milton and Shake fpeare. It may be expected, that, like other critics, I fhould next speak of the paffions: but as the main end and prin cipal effect of the bathos is to produce tranquility of mind (and fure it is a better design to promote fleep than madnefs), we have little to lay on this fubject. Nor will the fhort bounds of this difcourfe allow us to treat at large of the emollients and opiates of poefy; of the cool, and the mauner of producing it; or of the methods uled by our authors in managing the paffions. I hall but tranfiently remark, that nothing contributes fo much to the cool, as the ufe of wit in expreffing paffion: the true genius rarely fails of points, conceits, ard proper fimilies on fuch occafions; this we may term the pathetic epigrammatical, in which even puns are made ufe of with good fuccefs. Hereby our best authors have avoided throw ing themfelves, or their readers, into any indecent tranf poris. But, as it is fometimes needful to excite the paffions of our antagonist in the polemic way, the true ftudents in the law have constantly taken their methods from low life, where they obferved, that to move anger ule is made of folding and railing; to move love, of bawdry i to beget favour and friendship, of profs flattery; and to produce fear, of calumniating an adverfary with crimes obnoxious to the state. As for fhame, it is a filly patli on, |