When Job fays in fhort, "He washed his feet in butter," (a circumftance fome poets would have foftened, or paífed over), now hear how this butter is fpread out by the great genius. With teats diftended with their milky ftore, How cautious! and particular! He had (fays our author) fo many herds, which herds thrived fo well, and thriving fo well gave so much milk, and that milk produced fo much butter, that, if he did not, he might have washed his feet in it. The enfuing Defcription of Hell is no lefs remarkable in the circumftances, In flaming heaps the raging ocean rolls, Could the moft minute Dutch painters havę been more exact? How inimitably circumftantial is this alfo of a war-horfe! His eye-balls burn, he wounds the fmoking plain, They brandish high in air their threat'ning ftaves, Blackm. Job, p. 123 ¶ Pr. Arth. p. 197. + Pr. Arth. p. 89. Who Who would not think the poet had paffed his whole life at wakes in fuck laudable diverfions? fince he teaches us how to hold, nay how to make a Cudgel! Periphrafe is another great aid to prolixiy, being a diffuted circumlocutory manner of expng a known idea, which should be fo myfte ioully couched as to give the reader the pleasure of gueffing what it is that the author can poffibly mean, and a strange surprise when he finds it. The poet I laft mentioned is incomparable in this figure. A waving sea of heads was round me spread, And still fresh ftreams the gazing deluge fed *. Here is a waving fea of heads, which, by a fresh ftream of heads, grows to be a gazing deluge of heads. You come at laft to find, it means a great crowd. How pretty and how genteel is the following? Whofe fuckets are moist alchemy: What is this but a bee gathering honey? Little Syren of the stage, Empty warbler, breathing lyre, Wanton gale of fond defire, Tuneful mifchief, vocal fpell . Who would think this was only a poor gentlewo man that fung finely? *Blackm. Job, p. 78. † Cleveland. We may define amplification to be making the most of a thought; it is the spinning-wheel of the Bathos, which draws out and spreads it in the finest thread. There are amplifiers who can extend half a dozen thin thoughts over a whole folio; but for which the tale of many a vast romance, and the fubftance of many a fair volume, might be reduced into the fize of a primmer. In the book of Job are thefe words, Haft thou commanded the morning, and caused the dayfpring to know his place?" How is this extended by the most celebrated amplifier of our age? Canft thou fet forth th' ethereal mines on high, Which the refulgent ore of light supply? Is the celeftial furnace to thee known, In which I melt the golden metal down? Treasures, from which I dealt out light as faft, As all my ftars and lavish funs can wafte *, The fame author hath amplified a paffage in the 104th Pfalm; "He looks on the earth, and it trembles; he touches the hills, and they fmoke." The hills forget they're fix'd, and in their fright Caft off their weight, and ease themselves for flight: The woods, with terror wing'd, outfly the wind, And leave the heavy, panting hills behind +. You here fee the hills not only trembling, but fhaking off the woods from their backs to run the fafter. After this you are prefented with a, footrace of mountains and woods, where the woods diftance the mountains, that, like corpulent purfy *Blackm. Job, p. 108. † P. 267. fellows, fellows, come pulling and panting a valt way behind them. CHA P. IX. Of Imitation, and the Manner of imitating. THA HAT the true authors of the Profound are to imitate diligently the examples in their own way, is not to be queftioned; 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 E-n of Blackmore? Therefore when we fit down to write, let us bring fome great author to our mind, and ask ourfelves this question, How would Sir Richard have faid this? Do I exprefs my felf as fimply as Amb. Philips? Or flow my numbers with the quiet thoughtleflhefs of Mr Welted? But it may seem somewhat strange to affert, that our proficient should also read the works of those famous poets who have excelled in the Sublime; 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 Shakespear, Milton, and Dryden, for the contrary end, to bury their gold in his own dunghill. A true genius, when he finds any thing lofty or fhining in them, will have the kill to bring it down, take off the glofs, or quite dif charge the colour, by fome ingenious circumstance or periphrase, some addition or diminution, or by fome of thofe figures, the ufe of which we shall fhow in our next chapter. The book of Job is acknowledged to be infinitely fublime, and yet has not the father of the Bathos reduced it in every page? Is there a pasfage in all Virgil more painted up and laboured than the defcription of Etna in the third Æneid? --Horrificis juxta tonat Ætna ruinis; Interdumque atram prorumpit ad æthera nubem, Turbine fumantem piceo, et candente favilla; Attollitque glabos flammarum, et fidera lambit. Interdum fcopulos avulfaque vifcera montis Erigit eructans, liquefactaque faxa fub auras Cum gemitu glomerat, fundoque exæftuat imo. (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 colic. Ætna, and all the burning mountains, find Their kindled ftores with inbred' ftorms of wind Blown up to rage; and, roaring out, complain, As torn with inward gripes, and tort'ring pain: Lab'ring they caft their dreadful vomit round, And with their melted bowels spread the ground*. Horace, in fearch of the fublime, ftruck his head again the stars †; but Empedocles, to fathom the profound, threw himfelf into Etna. And who but would imagine our excellent modern had also been there from this defcription? *Pr. Arthur, p. 75. ✦ Sublimi feriam fidera vertie. Imitation |