brimftone, flames, fun-beams, gaping, pouring, fickning, drowning! all in two lines.

2. The JARGON.

T Thy head fhall rife, tho' buried in the duft,
And 'midft the clouds his glittering turrets thruft.

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

Upon the fhore; as frequent as the fand,
To meet the prince, the glad Dimetians ftand.

Quare, Where thefe Dimetians ftood? and of what fize they were? add also to the jargon fuch as the following:

* Deftruction's empire fhall no longer laft, And defolation lie for ever waste,

"Here Niobe, fad mother, makes her moan, And feems converted to a stone in ftone.

But for variegation, nothing is more useful than

3. The PARANOMASIA, or PUN, where a word, like the tongue of a jack

daw, speaks twice as much by being split; as this of Mr. Dennis,

Bullets, that wound, like Parthians as they fly*;

or this excellent one of Mr. Welfted, Behold the virgin lye

Naked, and only cover'd by the sky.

To which thou may'st add,
To fee her beauties no man needs to stoop,
She has the whole horizon for her hoop.

4. The ANTITHESIS, or SEE-SAW, whereby contraries and oppofitions are balanced in fuch a way, as to cause a reader to remain fufpended between them to his exceeding delight and recreation. Such are thefe on a lady, who made herfelf appear out of fize by hiding a young princess under her cloaths.

с

While the kind nymph changing her faultless shape Becomes unhandfome, handsomely to fcape.

On the maids of honour in mourning. Sadly they charm, and difmally they please.

b

2 Poems 1693, p. 13. Welfted, poems, Acon & Lavin. Waller. Steel, on Queen Mary.

His eyes fo bright

* Let in the object and let out the light.
The Gods look pale to fee us look fo red.
The Fairies and their queen,

In mantles blue came tripping o'er the green.
All nature felt a reverential fhock,
The sea stood ftill to fee the mountains rock.

CHA P. XI.

The figures continued: of the magnifying and diminishing figures,

A Genuine writer of the profund will

take care never to magnify any object without clouding it at the fame 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 effential quality of the profund, or if there chance to be a glimmering, it must be, as Milton expreffes it,

No light, but rather darkness vifible.

The chief figure of this fort is,

The HYPERBOLE, or impoffible.

i

For inftance, of a Lion.

He roar'd fo loud, and look'd so wondrous grim,. His very fhadow durft not follow him.

Of a Lady at Dinner.

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

Of the fame.

-The * obfcureness of her birth Cannot eclipfe the luftre of her eyes, Which make her all one light.

Of a Bull-baiting.

1Up to the ftars the sprawling maftives fly, And add new monfters to the frighted fky".

Of a Scene of Misery.

Behold a fcene of mifery and woe!

Here Argus foon might weep himself quite blind, Ev'n tho' he had Briareus' hundred hands

To wipe his hundred eyes

1

And that modest request of two absent lovers:

Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time,
And make two lovers happy.

3. 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 fame clafs of the magnifying may be referred the following, which are fo excellently modern, that we have yet no name for them. In defcribing a country profpect,

• I'd call them mountains, but can't call them fo,
For fear to wrong them with a name too low;
While the fair vales beneath fo humbly lie,
That even humble feems a term too high.

III. The last class remains; of the diminishing 1. the ANTICLIMAX, and figures: where the fecond line drops quite fhort of the firft, than which nothing creates greater furprize.

• Anon.

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