All nature felt a reverential shock,

The fea ftood still to fee the mountains rock *.

CHAP. XI.

The figures continued: of the magnifying and diminishing figures.

A

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

No light, but rather darkness visible.

The chief figure of this fort is,

The HYPERBOLE, or impoffible.

For inftance, of a lion.

He roar'd fo loud, and look'd so wond'rous grim,
His very shadow durst 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.

The obfcureness of her birth
Cannot eclipfe the luftre of her eyes,
Which make her all one light

Of a bull-beating.

Up to the stars the sprauling maftives fly ||,
And add new monsters to the frighted sky .

Of

Theob.

П See p. 115.

Blackm. Job, p. 176. + Vet. Ant.
Blackm.

Double Falfhood.

Of a scene of mifery.

Behold a scene of mifery and woe!

Here Argus foon might weep himself quite blind,
Ev'n though he had Briareus's hundred hands

To wipe his hundred eyes

And that modest request of two abfent lovers:

Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time,
And make two lovers happy.

3. The PERIPHRASIS, which the moderns call the circumbendibus, whereof we have given examples in the ninth chapter, and fhall again in the twelfth.

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

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 humbly lie,
That even humble feems a term too high §§.

III. The laft clafs remains; of the diminishing, 1. The ANTICLIMAX, and figures: where the fecond line drops quite fhort of the first, than which nothing creates greater furprize.

On the extent of the British arms.

Under the tropics is our language spoke,
And part of Flanders hath receiv'd our yoke [].

On the valour of the English.

Nor art nor nature has the force
To top its steady course,

Nor Alps nor Pyrenæans keep it out
Nor fortify'd redoubt

Ar other times this figure operates in a larger extent; and when the gentle reader is in expectation of some great image, he either finds it furprizingly imperfect, or is presented with fomething low, or quite ridiculous: a furprize refembling that of a curious perfon in a cabinet of antic ftatues, who beholds on the pedestal the names of Homer, or Cato; but looking up finds Homer without a head, and nothing to be feen of Cato but his privy member. Such are these lines of a leviathan at fea,

His motion works, and beats the oozy mud,
And with its flime incorporates the flood,
'Till all th' incumber'd, thick, fermenting stream
Does like one pot of boiling ointment feem.
Where'er he swims, he leaves along the lake
Such frothy furrows, fuch a foamy track,
That all the waters of the deep appear
Hoary-with age, or grey with fudden fear †·

BUT perhaps even these are excelled by the enfuing.

Now the refifted flames and fiery store,
By winds affaulted, in wide forges roar,
And raging feas flow down of melted ore.
Sometimes they hear long iron bars remov'd,
And to and fro huge heaps of cynders shov'd ‡.

2. The VULGAR

is also a species of the diminishing: by this a fpear flying into the air is compared to a boy whiftling as he goes on

an errand.

The

* Denn on Namur.

+ Blackm. Job, p. 197.

Prince Arthur, p. 157.

The mighty Stuffa threw a maffy spear,

Which, with its errand pleas'd, fung through the air

A man raging with grief to a mastiff dog.

I cannot ftifle this gigantic woe,

Nor on my raging grief a muzzle throw f.

and clouds big with water to a woman in great neceffity.

Diftended with the waters in 'em pent,
The clouds bang deep in air, but hang unrent.

3. The INFANTINE.

THIS is, when a poet grows fo very fimple, as to think and talk like a child. I fhall take my examples from the greatest master in this way: hear how he fondles like a mere ftammerer.

Little charm of placid mien,
Miniature of beauty's queen,
Hither, British muse of mine,
Hither, all ye Gracian nine,
With the lovely Graces three,
And your pretty nurseling fee.

When the meadows next are feen,
Sweet enamel, white and green,

When again the lambkins play,

Pretty Sportlings full of May,

Then the neck fo white and round,

(Little neck with brilliants bound.)

And thy gentleness of mind,

(Gentle from a gentle kind,) &c.

Happy thrice, and thrice agen
Happiest he of happy men, &c. .-

H 2

and

+ Job. p. 41.

Prince Arthur.

Amb. Philips on Mifs Cuzzona.

and the reft of thofe excellent lullabies of his compofiti

on.

How prettily he asks the sheep to teach him to bleat ?

Teach me to grieve with bleating moan, my sheep *.

HEAR how a babe would reafon on his nurfe's death.

WITH nolefs fimplicity does he fuppofe, that shepherdeffes tear their hair and beat their breafts at their own deaths:

Ye brighter maids, faint emblems of my fair,
With looks caft down, and with difhevel'd hair,.
In bitter anguish beat your breasts, and moan
Her death untimely, as it were your own ‡.

4. The INANITY, or NOTHINGNESS.

Or this the fame author furnishes us with moft beautiful inftances.

Ah filly I, more filly than my fheep,

(Which on the flow'ry plain I once did keep .)

To the grave fenate she could counsel give,
(Which with astonishment they did receive **.)

He whom loud cannon could not terrify,
Falls (from the grandeur of his Majesty ††)

Happy, merry as a king,

Sipping dew--you sip, and fing .

Where you easily perceive the nothingness of every se

cond verfe.