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Then a FULLER.

th' exhaling reeks, that secret rise, Borne on rebounding fun-beams through the fkies, Are thicken'd, wrought, and whiten'd till they grow A heav'nly fleece.

A MERCER or PACKER.

Didft thou one end of air's wide curtain hold,
And help the bales of ather to unfold;

Say, which cerulean pile was by thy hand enroll'd t

A BUTLER.

He meafures all the drops with wondrous skill;
Which the black clouds, his floating bottles, fill. ‡

And a BAKER.

God in the wilderness his table Spread
And in his airy ovens bak'd their bread. [

CHAP. VI.

Of the feveral kinds of geniuses in the profound, and the marks and characters of each.

I DOUBT not, but the reader, by this cloud of examples, begins to be convinced of the truth of our affertion, that the bathos is an art; and that the genius of no mortal whatever, following the mere ideas of nature, and unaffisted with an habitual, nay, laborious peculiarity of thinking, could. arrive

Blackm, civ. Pf. p. 18. † P. 174 P. 131.
Blackm. Song of Mofes, p. 218.

arrive at images fo wonderfully low and unaccountable. The great author, from whofe treasury we have drawn all these inftances, (the father of the bathos, and indeed the Homer of it,) has, like that immortal Greek, confined his labours to the greater poetry, and thereby left room for others to acquire a due share of praife in inferior kinds. Many painters, who could never hit a nofe or an eye, have with a felicity, copied a small-pox, or been admirable at a toad or a red herring: and feldom are we without geniufes for ftill life, which they can work up and ftiffen with incredible accuracy.

An univerfal genius rifes not in an age; but when he rifes, armies rife in him! he pours forth five or fix epic poems with greater facility, than five or fix pages can be produced by an elaborate and fervile copier after nature or the ancients. It is affirmed by Quintilian, that the fame genius which made Germanicus fo great a general, would with equal application have made him an excellent herioc poet. In like manner, reafoning from the affinity there appears between arts and fciences, I doubt not, but an active catcher of butterflies, & careful and fanciful pattern drawer, an industrious collector of shells, a laborious and tuneful bag piper, or a diligent breeder of tame rabbits, might feverally excel in their refpective parts of the bathos.

I fhall range thefe confined and lefs copious geniufes under proper claffes, and (the better to give their pictures to the reader) under the names of animals of fome fort or other; whereby he will be enabled, at the first fight of fuch as fhall daily come forth, to know to what kind to refer, and with what authors to compare them.

1. The flying fishes: thefe are writers who now and then rife upon their fins, and fly out of the profound; but their wings are foon dry, and they drop down to the bottom. G. S. A. H. C. G.

2. The fwallows are authors, that are eternally kimming and fluttering up and down, but all their agility is employed to catch flies. L. T. W. P.

Lord H.

3. The oftriches are fuch, whofe heavinefs rarely permits them to raife themfelves from the ground; their wings are of no use to lift them up, and their motion is between flying and walking; but then they run very faft D. F. L. E. the Hon. E. H. 4. The parrots are they, that repeat another's words in fuch a hoarse odd voice, as makes them feem their own. W. B. W. S. C. C. the Rev D. D.

5. The didappers are authors, that keep themfelves long out of fight, under water, and come up now and then, where you leaft expected them. L. W. G. D. Efq; the Hon. Sir. W. Y,

The porpoifes are unwieldly and big; they put all their numbers into a great turmoil and tempeft, but whenever they appear in plain light (which is feldom), they are only fhapelefs and ugly monsters. 1. D. C. G. I. O.

7. The frogs are fuch, as can neither walk nor fly, but can leap and bound to admiration; they live generally in the bottom of a ditch, and make a great noife, whenever they thurft their heads above water, E. W. 1. M, Efq; T. D. Gent.

8 The cels are obfcure authors, that wrap themselves up in their own mud, but are mighty nimble and pert. L. W. L. T. P. M. General C.

9. The tortoifes are flow and chill, and, like paftoral writers, delight much in gardens: they have, for the most part, a fine embroidered fhell, ard underneath it a heavy lump. A. P. W. B. L. E. the Right Honourable E. of S.

Thefe are the chief characteristics of the bathos, and in each of these kinds we have the comfort to be bleffed with fundry and manifold chofe fpirits in this our island.

CHAP.

CHAP. VII.

Of the profound, when it confifts in the thought,

WE

E have already laid down the principles upon which our author is to proceed, and the manner of forming his thought by familiarizing his mind to the lowest objects; to which, it may be added, that vulgar converfation will greatly contribute. There is no queftion, but the garret, or the printer's boy, may often be difcerned in fuch compofitions made in fuch fcenes and company; and much of Mr. Curl himself has been infenfibly infufed into the works of his learned writers.

The phyfician, by the ftudy and infpection of urine and ordure, approves himself in the fcience; and in like fort fhould our author accuftom and exercife his imagination upon the dregs of nature,

This will render his thoughts truly and fundamentally low, and carry him many fathoms beyond mediocrity. For, certain it is (though fome lukewarm heads imagine they may be fafe by temporizing between the extremes), that where there is not a triticalnefs or mediocrity in the thought, it can never be funk into the genuine and perfect bathos by the most elaborate low expref effion : it can, at most, be only carefully obfcured, or meta• phorically debafed. But, it is the thought alone that ftrikes, and gives the whole that fpirit, which we admire and ftare at. For inftance, in that ingenious piece on a lady's drinking the bath waters:

She drinks! he drinks! behold the matchlefs dame! To her 'tis water, but to us 'tis flame :

Thus

Thus fire is water, water fire by turns,

And the fame ftream at once both cools and burns*

What can be more easy and unaffected, than the diction of these verses? it is the turn of thought alone, and the variety of imagination, that charm and surprise us. And when the fame lady goes into the bath, the thought (as in juftnefs it ought) goes ftill deeper :

Venus beheld her, 'midst her croud of flaves,

And thought herself just risen from the waves ↑

How much out of the way of common fenfe is this reflection of Venus, not knowing herself from the lady ?

Of the fame nature is that noble miftake of a frighted ståg in a full chace, who, (faith the poet,)

Hears his own feet, and thinks they found like more; And fears the hind feet will o'ertake the fore,

So aftonishing as thefe are, they yield to the following, which is profundity itself.

None but himself can be his parallel ‡.

Unless it may feem borrowed from the thought of that mafter of a fhow in Smithfield, who writ in large letters over the picture of his elephant,

This is the greatest elephant in the world, except himSelf.

However, our next inftance is certainly an original. Speaking of a beautiful infant,

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