The noise returning with returning light,

What did it?

Difpers'd the filence, and dispell'd the night

The glories of proud London to survey,
The sun himself shall rise-by break of day †.

5. The EXPLETIVE,

admirably exemplified in the epithets of many authors.

Th' umbrageous shadow, and the verdant green,
The running current, and odorous fragrance,
Chear my lone folitude with joyous gladness.

OR in pretty drawling words like thefe,

All men his tomb, all men his fons adore,
And his fons fons, till there shall be no more .
The rising fun our grief did fee,

The fetting fun did fee the fame.
While wretched we remembred thee,

O Sion, Sion, lovely name .

6. The MACROLOGY and PLEONASM

are as generally coupled, as a lean rabbit with a fat one; nor is it a wonder, the fuperfluity of words and vacuity of fenfe being just the fame thing. I am pleased to fee one of our greatest adverfaries employ this figure.

The growth of meadows, and the pride of fields,
The food of armies, and fupport of wars,
Refuse of fwords, and gleanings of a fight,
Leflen his numbers, and contract his host.
Where'er his friends retire, or foes fucceed,
Cover'd with tempefts, and in oceans drown'd **.

Of all which the perfection is..

The TAUTOLOGY.

Break through the billows, and-divide the main.
In fmoother numbers, and-in fofter verfe *
Divide--and part- the fever'd world-in two §.

WITH ten thousand others equally mufical, and plentifully flowing through most of our celebrated modern poems.

CHAP. XII.

Of expreffion, and the feveral forts of flyle of the pre

ΤΗ

fent age.

HE expreffion is adequate, when it is proportionably low to the profundity of the thought. It muit 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 ufe the wrong number; the fword and peftilence at once devours, instead of devour. Sometimes the wrong cafe ; and who more fit to footh the God than thee? instead of thou. And rather than fay, Thetis faw A billes weep, she beard him weep.

WE must be exceeding careful in two things; firft, in the choice of low words: fecondly, in the jober and orderly way of ranging them. Many of our poets are naturally bleffed with this talent, infomuch that they are in the circumftance of that honeft citizen, who had made profe all his life without knowing it. Let verfes run in this manner, just to be a vehicle to the words, (I take them from my laft-cited author, who tho' otherwise by no means of our rank, feemed once in his life to have a mind to be fimple.)

• Tonf. Misc. 12° vol. iv. p. 291. 4th edition. 5 Ibid. vol. vi. p. 121.

Ti Hom. II. i.

If

If not, a prize I will myself decree,

From him, or him, or else perhaps from thee
full of days was he';

Two ages past, he liv'd the third to see f.
The king of forty kings, and honour'd more
By mighty Jove, than e'er was king before 4.
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,
Though much more wife than I pretend to be **.

Or thefe, of the fame hand :

I leave the arts of poetry and verse

To them that practise them with more success.
Of greater truths I now prepare to tell,

And fo at once, dear friend and mufe, farewel ft.

Sometimes a fingle word will vulgarize a poetical idea as where a fhip 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 :

Should the whole frame of nature round him break,
Me, uneoncern'd, would hear the mighty crack

So alfo in thefe,

Beasts 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

P. 19.

tt Tonf. Mifc. 12° vol. iv. Prince Arthur. p. 158. §§. Job. p. 203.

He from the clouds does the fweet liquor squeeze,

That chears the foreft and the garden trees. §.

It is also useful to employ technical terms, which eftrange your ftyle from the great and general ideas of nature and the higher your fubject is, the lower fhould you fearch into mechanics for your expreffion. If you defcribe the garment of an angel, fay that his linen was finely fpun t, and bleached on the happy plains. Call an army of angels, angelic cuiraffiers ; and if you have occafion to mention a number of misfortunes, stile them

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 ftyles 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 most gaudy, and do many times grow in great plenty at the bottom of ponds and ditches.

A fine writer of this kind presents 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 sweats, and mix'd with thousand kiffes,

As if the willing branches strove

To beautify and shade the grove ;

(which indeed moft branches do.) But this is ftill ex

celled by our laureate,

Branches in branches twin'd compofe the grove,
And shoot and spread, and bloffom into love.

The

Id. Job. p. 264.

P. 339.

Job. p. 86.

Fr. Arthur, p. 19.
Behn's Poems, p. 2.

Ib.

The trembling palms their mutual vows repeat,
And bending poplars bending poplars meet.
The diftant plantanes feem to prefs more nigh,
And to the fighing alders, alders figh ||..

Hear alfo our Homer.

His robe of ftate is form'd of light refin'd,
An endless train of lustre spreads behind.
His throne's of bright compacted glory made,
With pearls celestial, and with gems
inlaid :

Whence floods of joy, and seas of fplendor flow,
On all the 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 tafte of the times the works of the antients. 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 bow, the other the force and compulfion with which it is brought about. It is by virtue of this ftyle that Tacitus talks like a coffee house politician, Jofephus I like the British Gazetteer, Tully is as fhort and smart as Seneca or Mr Afgill, Marcus Aurelius is excellent at fnip-fnap, and honest Thomas a Kempis as prim and polite as any preacher at court..

3. The ALAMODE STYLE,

which is fine by being new, and has this happiness attending it, that it is as durable and extenfive as the poem itfelf. Take fome examples of it, in the defcription of the fun in a mourning coach upon the death of Q. Mary.

See

$ Blackm. Pfalm. civ.

Guardian, 120, 127.
Jofephus, tranflated by Sir Roger L'eftrange.