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way contribute to the support of the whole; in like manner, as the weakest reeds, when joined in one bundle, become infrangible. To which end our art ought to be put upon the same foot with other arts of this age. The vast improvement of modern manufactures ariseth from their being divided into several branches, and parcelled out to several trades. For instance, in clock-making one artist makes the balance, another the spring, another the crown-wheels, a fourth the case, and the principal workman puts all together. To this economy we owe the perfection of our modern watches, and doubtless we also might that of our modern poetry and rhetoric, were the several parts branched out in the like manner.

Nothing is more evident than that divers persons, no other way remarkable, have each a strong disposition to the formation of some particular trope or figure. Aristotle saith, that the hyperbole is an ornament fit for young men of quality; accordingly we find in those gentlemen a wonderful propensity towards it, which is marvellously improved by travelling. Soldiers also and seamen are very happy in the same figure. The periphrasis, or circumlocution, is the peculiar talent of country farmers; the proverb and apologue, of old men at their clubs; the ellipsis, or speech by half words, of ministers and politicians; the aposiopesis, of courtiers; the litotes, or diminution, of ladies, whisperers, and backbiters; and the anadiplosis, of common cryers and hawkers, who, by redoubling the same words, persuade people to buy their oysters, green hastings, or new ballads. Epithets may be found in great plenty at Billingsgate, sarcasm and irony learned upon the water, and the epiphonema or exclamation frequently from the Bear-garden, and as frequently from the Hear him of the House of Commons.

Now each man applying his whole time and genius

upon his particular figure, would doubtless attain to perfection; and when each became incorporated and sworn into the society (as hath been proposed) a poet or orator would have no more to do but to send to the particular traders in each kind, to the metaphorist for his allegories, to the simile-maker for his comparisons, to the ironist for his sarcasms, to the apothegmatist for his sentences, &c. whereby a dedication or speech would be composed in a moment, the superior artist having nothing to do but to put together all the materials.

I therefore propose that there be contrived with all convenient despatch at the public expense, a rhetorical chest of drawers, consisting of three stories, the highest for the deliberative, the middle for the demonstrative, and the lowest for the judicial. These shall be divided into loci, or places, being repositories for matter and argument in the several kinds of oration or writing; and every drawer shall again be subdivided into cells, resembling those of cabinets for rarities. The apartment for peace or war, and that of the liberty of the press, may in a very few days be filled with several arguments perfectly new; and the vituperative partition will as easily be replenished with a most choice collection, entirely of the growth and manufacture of the present age. Every composer will soon be taught the use of this cabinet, and how to manage all the registers of it, which will be drawn out much in the manner of those in an organ.

The keys of it must be kept in honest hands, by some reverend prelate, or valiant officer, of unquestionable loyalty and affection to every present establishment in Church and State; which will sufficiently guard against any mischief which might otherwise be apprehended from it.

And being lodged in such hands, it may be at discre

VOL. V.

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tion let out by the day, to several great orators in both houses; from whence it is to be hoped much profit and gain will also accrue to our society.

CHAPTER XIV.2

HOW TO MAKE DEDICATIONS, PANEGYRICS, OR SATIRES, AND OF THE COLOURS OF HONOURABLE AND DISHONOURABLE.

Now of what necessity the foregoing project may prove, will appear from this single consideration, that nothing is of equal consequence to the success of our works as speed and despatch. Great pity it is, that solid brains are not like other solid bodies, constantly endowed with a velocity in sinking, proportioned to their heaviness: for it is with the flowers of the Bathos as with those of nature, which if the careful gardener brings not hastily to market in the morning, must unprofitably perish and wither before night. And of all our productions none is so short-lived as the dedication and panegyric, which are often but the praise of a day, and become by the next, utterly useless, improper, indecent, and false. This is the more to be lamented, inasmuch as these two are the sorts whereon in a manner depend that profit which must still be remembered to be the main end of our writers and speakers.

2 It will be difficult to find more knowledge of life, more wit, more satire, more good sense, in any passage of equal length, than is comprised in this fourteenth chapter. Perhaps Dryden's Dedication of the State of Innocence to the Duchess of York is a piece of the grossest and most abject adulation that ever disgraced true genius, except indeed the nauseous and fulsome dedication of such a man as Corneille of his Horace to Cardinal Richlieu, after this proud churchman had treated him so injuriously in the affair of the Cid.-Warton.

We shall therefore employ this chapter in showing the quickest method of composing them; after which we shall teach a short way to epic poetry. And these being confessedly the works of most importance and difficulty, it is presumed we may leave the rest to each author's own learning or practice.

First of panegyric: every man is honourable, who is so by law, custom, or title. The public are better judges of what is honourable than private men. The virtues of great men, like those of plants, are inherent in them whether they are exerted or not; and the more strongly inherent, the less they are exerted; as a man is the more rich, the less he spends. All great ministers, without either private or economical virtue, are virtuous by their posts, liberal and generous upon the public money, provident upon public supplies, just by paying public interest, courageous and magnanimous by the fleets and armies, magnificent upon the public expenses, and prudent by public success. They have by their office, a right to a share of the public stock of virtues; besides they are by prescription immemorial invested in all the celebrated virtues of their predecessors in the same stations, especially those of their own ancestors.

As to what are commonly called the colours of honourable and dishonourable, they are various in different countries; in this, they are blue, green, and red3.

But forasmuch as the duty we owe to the public doth often require that we should put some things in a strong light, and throw a shade over others, I shall explain the method of turning a vicious man into a hero.

The first and chief rule is, the golden rule of trans

3 The three orders of knighthood.

formation, which consists in converting vices into their bordering virtues. A man who is a spendthrift, and will not pay a just debt, may have his injustice transformed into liberality; cowardice may be metamorphosed into prudence; intemperance into good nature and good fellowship; corruption into patriotism; and lewdness into tenderness and facility.

The second is the rule of contraries. It is certain, the less a man is endowed with any virtue, the more need he has to have it plentifully bestowed, especially those good qualities of which the world generally believes he hath none at all: for who will thank a man for giving him that which he has?

The reverse of these precepts will serve for satire, wherein we are ever to remark, that whoso loseth his place, or becomes out of favour with the government, hath forfeited his share in public praise and honour. Therefore the truly public-spirited writer ought in duty to strip him whom the government hath stripped; which is the real poetical justice of this age. For a full collection of topics and epithets to be used in the praise and dispraise of ministerial and unministerial persons, I refer to our rhetorical cabinet; concluding with an earnest exhortation to all my brethren, to observe the precepts here laid down, the neglect of which hath cost some of them their ears in a pillory.

CHAPTER XV.

A RECEIPT TO MAKE AN EPIC POEM1.

AN epic poem, the critics agree, is the greatest work human nature is capable of. They have already laid

4 A severe animadversion is here intended on Bossu; who, after he has been so many years quoted, commended, and followed, by a long train of

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