In bitter anguish beat your breasts, and moan
Her death untimely, as it were your own.

4. THE INANITY, OR NOTHINGNESS.

Of this the same author furnishes us with most beautiful instances:

9 Ah silly I, more silly than my sheep,
(Which on the flow'ry plain I once did keep.)
1
1 To the grave Senate she could counsel give,
Which with astonishment they did receive.)

2 He whom loud cannon could not terrify,
Falls (from the grandeur of his Majesty.)

3

Happy, merry as a king,

Sipping dew, you sip, and sing.

The Noise returning with returning Light,

What did it?

4

Dispers'd the Silence, and dispell'd the Night,

You easily perceive the Nothingness of every second

Verse.

5 The Glories of proud London to survey,

The Sun himself shall rise-by break of day.

6 Th' umbrageous shadow, and the verdant green, The running current, and odorous fragrance, Cheer my lone solitude with joyous gladness.

Or in pretty drawling words like these,

7 All men his tomb, all men his sons adore,
And his son's sons, till there shall be no more.

The rising sun our grief did see,

The setting sun did see the same,
While wretched we remember thee,
O Sion, Sion, lovely name.

6. THE MACROLOGY AND PLEONASM

are generally coupled, as a lean rabbit with a fat one; nor is it a wonder, the superfluity of words, and vacuity of sense, being just the same thing. I am pleased to see one of our greatest adversaries employ this figure.

9 The growth of meadows, and the pride of fields, The food of armies, and support of wars,

Even such pure writers as Catullus, Lucretius, and Horace, have sometimes been guilty of Pleonasms; of which there are examples in the Miscell. Observations of Jortin, p. 37. vol. ii. Of this sort of style Quintilian, as usual, speaks elegantly: 'Ut corpora non robore sed valetudine inflantur; et, recto itinere lapsi, plerumque divertunt. Erit ergo obscurior, quo quisque deterior.' Again, Ut statura breves in digitos eriguntur, et plura infirmi minantur.-Ne oneretur tamen verbis multis; nam sit longa et impedita oratio, ut eam judices similem agmini totidem lixas habenti quot milites; in quo et numerus est duplex, nec duplum virium.' The six English lines here quoted are a severe stroke on Addison's Campaign.

Refuse of swords, and gleanings of a fight, Lessen in numbers, and contract his host. Where'er his friends retire, or foes succeed, Cover'd with tempests, and in oceans drown'd. Of all which the Perfection is

THE TAUTOLOGY.

1 Break thro' the billows, and-divide the main. In smoother numbers, and-in softer verse. 2 Divide-and part-the silver'd World-in two. With ten thousand others equally musical, and plentifully flowing through most of our celebrated modern Poems.

CHAP. XII.

OF EXPRESSION, AND THE SEVERAL SORTS OF STYLE OF THE PRESENT AGE.

THE Expression is adequate, when it is proportionably low to the Profundity of the Thought. It must not be always Grammatical, lest it appear pedantic and ungentlemanly; nor too clear, for fear it become vulgar; for obscurity bestows a cast of the wonderful, and throws an oracular dignity upon a piece which hath no meaning.

Tons. Misc. 12.mo. vol. iv. p. 291, 4th Edit. 2 Ibid. vol. vi. p. 121. W.

For example, sometimes use the wrong Number The Sword and Pestilence at once devours, instead of devour. Sometimes the wrong Case; And who more fit to soothe the God than thee? instead of thou: And rather than say, Thetis saw Achilles weep, she heard him weep.

We must be exceeding careful in two things: first, in the Choice of low Words: secondly, in the sober and orderly way of ranging them. Many of our Poets are naturally bless'd with this talent, insomuch that they are in the circumstance of that honest Citizen, who had made Prose all his life without knowing it. Let verses run in this manner, just to be a vehicle to the words: (I take them from my last eited author, who, though otherwise by no means of our rank, seemed once in his life to have a mind to be simple.)

5

If not, a prize I will myself decree,

From him, or him, or else perhaps from thee.

* full of days was he;

Two ages past, he liv'd the third to see.

The king of forty kings, and honour'd more
By mighty Jove than e'er was king before.

8 That I may know, if thou my pray'r deny,
The most despis'd of all the Gods am I.

3 Ti. Hom. Il. i. W.

♦ Our author himself has more than once fallen into this fault, as hath been observed in the notes of this edition, and of which Dr. Lowth in his Grammar mentions many instances.

9 Then let my mother once be rul'd by me, Though much more wise than I pretend to be.

Or these of the same hand 1.

2 I leave the arts of poetry and verse

To them that practise them with more success:
Of greater truths I now prepare to tell,

3

And so at once, dear friend and muse, farewell.

Sometimes a single Word will vulgarize a poetical idea; as where a Ship set on fire owes all the Spirit of the Bathos to one choice word that ends the line.

And his scorch'd ribs the hot contagion fry'd.

And in that description of a World in ruins :

* Should the whole frame of nature round him break, He unconcern'd would hear the mighty Crack.

So also in these:

• Beasts tame and savage to the river's brink, Come, from the fields and wild abodes-to drink.

Frequently two or three words will do it effectually:

• He from the clouds does the sweet liquor squeeze, That cheers the Forest and the Garden trees.

9 Ti. Hom. Il. i. p. 38.

1

Asserting plainly that the first book of the Iliad, published

by Tickell, was really the work of Addison.

2 Tons. Misc. 12mo. vol. iv. p. 292, fourth Edit. W.

• These are the two last feeble lines of Addison's epistle to Sacheverell; and the two preceding ones are as bad.

♦ Pr. Arthur, p. 151. • Job, 263.