FIRST HE IS A PAINTER.

7 Sometimes the Lord of Nature in the air, Spreads forth his clouds, his sable canvas, where His pencil, dipp'd in heav'nly colour bright, Paints his fair rain-bow, charming to the sight.

NOW HE IS A CHEMIST.

Th' Almighty Chemist does his work prepare,
Pours down his waters on the thirsty plain,
Digests his lightning, and distils his rain.

NOW HE IS A WRESTLER,

• Me in his griping arms th' Eternal took,
And with such mighty force my body shook,
That the strong grasp my members sorely bruis'd,
Broke all my bones, and all my sinews loos'd.

NOW A RECRUITING OFFICER.

1 For clouds, the sun-beams levy fresh supplies, And raise recruits of vapours, which arise Drawn from the seas, to muster in the skies.

" Blackm. opt. edit. duod. 1716. p. 172. W.

The gravity of the solemn pedant Scriblerus is not at all kept up in this piece. His criticisms are not any more in character than the Travels of Gulliver, erroneously asserted to be part of the plan intended to be pursued by Pope, Arbuthnot, and Swift.

No man ever attempted so many epic poems as Blackmore; and few have written so many verses except perhaps Lopez de Vega, who is said to have produced in all 21,316 verses.

• Blackm. Ps. civ. p. 263.

1 Blackm. p. 170. W.

None of these images are more absurd than where Dryden says, in the 281st stanza of his Annus Mirabilis, that the Almighty

NOW A PEACEABLE GUARANTEE.

2 In leagues of peace the neighbours did agree, And to maintain them, God was Guarantee.

3

THEN HE IS AN ATTORNEY.

Job, as a vile offender, God indites,
And terrible decrees against me writes.
God will not be my advocate,

My cause to manage or debate.

In the following Lines he is a GOLDBEATER. • Who the rich metal beats, and then, with care, Unfolds the golden leaves, to gild the fields of air.

THEN A FULLER.

-th' exhaling reeks that secret rise,

Borne on rebounding sun-beams through the skies,

having looked down for some time on the fire of London, at last claps an extinguisher upon it:

"A hollow crystal pyramid he takes

In firmamental waters dipt above;
Of it a broad extinguisher he makes,

And hoods the flames that to their quarry drove."

But another passage in Dryden is carried to a still greater length of profaneness and absurdity in his Hind and Panther; who speaks thus of the Creator:

"The divine Blacksmith in th' abyss of light,

Yawning and lolling with a careless beat,

Struck out the mute creation at a heat;

But he work'd hard to hammer out our souls,

He bless'd the bellows, and stirr'd up the coals;

Long time he thought, and could not a sudden,

Knead up with unskimm'd milk this reasoning pudding."

* Blackm. p. 70.

3 P. 61. W.

4

Blackm. p. 181.

P. 18.

Are thicken'd, wrought, and whiten'd, till they grow

A heav'nly fleece.

A MERCER, OR PACKER.

• Didst thou one end of air's wide curtain hold, And help the Bales of Ether to unfold;

Say, which cerulian pile was by thy hand unroll'd?

A BUTLER.

"He measures 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.

• Blackm. p. 174.

7 P. 131. W.

It is remarkable that Swift highly commends Blackmore in more than one place; from whom Dr. Johnson strangely asserts that Pope might have learnt the art of reasoning in verse, exemplified in the Poem on Creation; but Ambrose Philips related that Blackmore, as he proceeded in this poem, communicated it from time to time to a club of wits, his associates, and that every man contributed as he could, either improvement or correction; so that there are perhaps no where in the book thirty lines together that now stand as they were originally written.

Blackm. Song of Moses, p. 218. W.

CHAP. VI.

OF THE SEVERAL KINDS OF GENIUSES IN THE PROFUND, 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 assertion, that the Bathos is an Art; and that the Genius of no mortal whatever, following the mere ideas of Nature, and unassisted with an habitual, nay laborious peculiarity of thinking, could arrive at images so wonderfully low and unaccountable. The great author, from whose treasury we have drawn all these instances (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 praise in inferior kinds. Many painters, who could never hit a nose or an eye, have with felicity copied a small-pox, or been admirable at a toad or a red-herring. And seldom are we without geniuses for Still-life, which they can work up and stiffen with incredible accuracy.

A universal Genius rises not in an age; but when he rises, armies rise in him! he pours forth five or six Epic Poems with greater facility, than five or six pages can be produced by an elaborate and servile copier after Nature or the Ancients. It

is affirmed by Quintilian', that the same genius which made Germanicus so great a General, would with equal application have made him an excellent Heroic Poet. In like manner, reasoning from the affinity there appears between Arts and Sciences, I doubt not, but an active catcher of butterflies, a careful and fanciful pattern-drawer, an industrious collector of shells, a laborious and tuneful bagpiper, or a diligent breeder of tame rabbits, might severally excel in their respective parts of the Bathos.

I shall range these confined and less copious Geniuses under proper classes, and (the better to give their pictures to the reader) under the names of Animals of some sort or other; whereby he will be enabled, at the first sight of such as shall daily come forth, to know to what kind to refer, and with what Authors to compare them.

1. The Flying Fishes: These are writers who now and then rise upon their fins, and fly out of the Profund; but their wings are soon dry, and they drop down to the bottom. G. S. A. H. C. G.

2. The Swallows are authors that are eternally

In a fine passage of the tenth book: "Germanicum Augustum ab institutis studiis deflexit cura terrarum; parumque diis visum est esse eum maximum poetarum."

? This was the chapter which gave so much offence, and excited such loud clamours against our author by his introduction of these initial letters, which he in vain asserted were placed at random, and meant no particular writers; which was not believed. These initial letters cannot now be authentically filled up.