raises an unexpected picture of Winter. Of this sort is the following:

5 The gaping clouds pour lakes of sulphur down, Whose livid flashes sick'ning sunbeams drown.

What a noble Confusion! clouds, lakes, brimstone, flames, sunbeams, gaping, pouring, sick'ning, drowning! all in two lines.

6

2. THE JARGON.

Thy head shall rise, though buried in the dust, And 'midst the clouds his glittering turrets thrust.

Quære, What are the glittering turrets of a man's head?

Upon the shore, as frequent as the sand,

To meet the Prince, the glad Dimetians stand.

Quare, Where these Dimetians stood? and of what size they were? Add also to the Jargon such as the following.

8 Destruction's empire shall no longer last,
And Desolation lie for ever waste.

9 Here Niobe, sad mother, makes her moan,
And seems converted to a stone in stone.

3. THE PARANOMASIA, OR PUN1,

where a Word, like the tongue of a jackdaw, speaks twice as much by being split: as this of Mr. Dennis 2,

Bullets that wound, like Parthians, as they fly

or this excellent one of Mr. Welsted 3,

Behold the Virgin lie

Naked, and only cover'd by the Sky.

To which thou mayst add,

To see her beauties no man needs to stoop,
She has the whole Horizon for her hoop.

4. THE ANTITHESIS, OR SEE-SAW,

whereby Contraries and Oppositions are balanced in such a way, as to cause a reader to remain suspended between them, to his exceeding delight and recreation. Such are these, on a lady who made her

1 A happy reading of Atterbury vindicates Milton from degrading his style by a very vile pun often quoted:

"And brought into this world, a world of woe." Atterbury would point it thus:

"And brought into this world (a world of woe)"

in a parenthesis, and putting the repeated word in apposition to the former.

3

Poems, 1793, p. 13. Welsted, Poems, Acon and Lavin. W. ✦ It were to be wished our author himself had not been so very fond of this figure; of all others, if too often repeated, the most tiresome and disgusting. See what is said of this figure before in vol. iii. of this edition.

self appear out of size, by hiding a young princess under her clothes.

5 While the kind nymph changing her faultless shape, Becomes unhandsome, handsomely to scape.

On the Maids of Honour in mourning:

6 Sadly they charm, and dismally they please. 7 His eyes so bright

Let in the object and let out the light.

The Gods look pale to see us look so red.

The Fairies and their Queen

In mantles blue come tripping o'er the green. 9 All nature felt a reverential shock, The sea stood still to see the mountains rock.

CHAP. XI.

THE FIGURES CONTINUED:

OF THE MAGNIFY

ING AND DIMINISHING FIGURES.

A GENUINE Writer of the Profund will take care never to magnify any object without clouding it at the same time: his thought will appear in a true mist, and very unlike what is in nature. It must always be remembered that darkness is an essential

5 Waller.
• Lee, Alex.

• Steele on Queen Mary.

9

7 Quarles.

Phil. Past. 1 Blackm. Job, p. 176. W.

quality of the Profund, or, if there chance to be a glimmering, it must be as Milton expresses it,

No light, but rather darkness visible.

The chief Figure of this sort is,

1. THE HYPERBOLE, OR IMPOSSIBLE 2.

For instance, of a Lion;

He roar'd so loud, and look'd so wondrous grim, His very shadow durst not follow him.

Of a Lady at Dinner.

The silver whiteness that adorns thy neck,
Sullies the plate, and makes the napkin black.

Of the same.

• Th' obscureness of her birth

Cannot eclipse the lustre of her eyes,
Which make her all one light.

Of a Bull-baiting.

5 Up to the Stars the sprawling mastives fly, And add new monsters to the frighted sky.

Of a scene of Misery.

Behold a scene of misery and woe!

Here Argus soon might weep himself quite blind,

* Into which even the great Corneille has sometimes fallen, and that too even in his Cinna; much more when he copies the extravagancies of Guillam de Castro, in his Cid. The Spanish writers abound in these absurdities; and indeed there are many such in Rotrou and in Ronsard,

3 Vet. Aut. 5 Blackm.

Theob. Double Falsehood. 6 Anon. W.

Ev'n though he had Briareus' hundred hands
To wipe those hundred

eyes.

And that modest request of two absent lovers :
Ye Gods! annihilate but Space and Time,
And make two lovers happy.

II. The PERIPHRASIS, which the Moderns call the Circumbendibus, whereof we have given examples in the ninth chapter, and shall again in the twelfth.

To the same class of the Magnifying may be referred the following, which are so excellently modern, that we have yet no name for them. In describing a country prospect,

I'd call them mountains, but can't call them so,
Nor fear to wrong them with a name too low;
While the fair vales beneath so humbly lie,
That even humble seems a term too high.

III. The third Class remains, of the Diminishing Figures: And 1. the ANTICLIMAX, where the second line drops quite short of the first, than which nothing creates greater surprise.

On the extent of the British Arms.

8 Under the Tropics is our language spoke, And part of Flanders hath receiv'd our Yoke.

On a Warrior.

And thou Dalhoussy, the great God of War,
Lieutenant Colonel to the Earl of Mar.

7 Anon.

8

⚫ Waller.

Anon. W.