Of greater truths I now prepare to tell,

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, unconcerned, 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.

It is also useful to employ technical terms,¶ which

*Tonson's Micellany, 12mo. vol. iv. p. 292. 4th edition. These are the two last feeble lines of Addison's Epistle to Sacheverell; and the two preceding ones are as bad.-Dr WARTON. + Tonson's Miscellany, vol. vi. p. 119. Job, p. 263. § Prince Arthur, p. 151. Id. Job, p. 264.

I No passage in Blackmore himself can exceed the vulgarity of introducing technical terms, and sea-language, more than the following lines of the 146, 147, and 148 stanzas of Dryden's Annus Mirabilis :

"So here some pick out bullets from the sides,
Some drive old oakum thro' each seam and rift;

Their left hand does the calking-iron guide,
The rattling mallet with the right they lift.

"With boiling pitch another, near at hand,

From friendly Sweden brought, the seams instops;
Which well laid o'er, the salt-sea waves withstand,
And shake them from the rising beak in drops.

estrange your style from the great and general ideas of nature; and the higher your subject is, the lower should ye search into mechanics for your expression. If you describe the garment of an angel, say that his linen was finely spun, and bleached on the happy plains.* Call an army of angels, angelic cuirassiers; † and if you have occasion to mention a number of misfortunes, style them

Fresh troops of pains, and regimented woes. +

Style is divided by the rhetoricians into the proper and figured. Of the figured we have already treated, and the proper is what our authors have nothing to do with. Of styles we shall mention only the principal, which owe to the moderns either their chief improvement, or entire invention.

1. The FLORID STYLE,

than which none is more proper to the bathos, as flowers, which are the lowest of vegetables, are most gaudy, and do many times grow in great plenty at the bottom of ponds and ditches.

A fine writer of this kind presents you with the following posey:

The groves appear all drest with wreaths of flowers,

And from their leaves drop aromatic showers ;

Whose fragrant heads in mystic twines above,

Exchang'd their sweets, and mix'd with thousand kisses.

"Some the gall'd ropes with dawby marling blind,
Or sear-cloth mash with strong tarpauling coats;
To try new shrouds one mounts into the wind,
And one below their ease or stiffness notes."

Who would think it possible that these lines, and there are many such to be found in his works, could have been written by the author of Palamon and Arcite, and the Ode on St Cecilia's day?-Dr WARTON.

*Prince Arthur, p. 19. + Ibid. p. 339.

Job, p. 86.

As if the willing branches strove,*

To beautify and shade the grove. †

Which indeed most branches do. But this is still excelled by our Laureate:

Branches in branches twined compose the grove,
And shoot and spread, and blossom into love.
The trembling palms their mutual vows repeat,
And bending poplars bending poplars meet.
The distant plantains seem to press more nigh,
And to the sighing alders, alders sigh. +

Hear also our Homer:

His robe of state is form'd of light refin'd,
An endless train of lustre spreads behind.
His throne's of bright compacted glory made,
With pearls celestial, and with gems inlaid :
Whence floods of joy, and seas of splendour flow,
On all the angelic gazing throng below. §

2. The PERT STYLE.

This does in as peculiar a manner become the low in wit, as a pert air does the low in stature. Mr Thomas Brown, the author of "The London Spy," and all the spies and trips in general, are herein to be diligently studied; in verse, Mr Cibber's prologues.

But the beauty and energy of it is never so conspicuous, as when it is employed in modernizing, and adapting to the taste of the times the works of the ancients. This we rightly phrase, doing them

* It is surprising to find so false and florid a conceit as is contained in the following lines, in a writer so generally chaste and correct as Addison.

"While here the vine on hills of ruin climbs,

Industrious to conceal great Bourbon's crimes."-Campaign.

Dr WARTON.

Guardian, 12mo, 127,

Edward Ward.

into English, and making them into English; two expressions of great propriety; the one denoting our neglect of the manner how; the other, the force and compulsion with which it is brought about. It is by virtue of this style, that Tacitus talks like a coffee-house politician, Josephus* like the British Gazetteer, Tully is as short and smart as Seneca† or Mr Asgill, Marcus Aurelius is excellent at snipsnap, and honest Thomas à-Kempis as prim and polite as any preacher at court.

3. The ALAMODE STYLE,

which is fine by being new, and has this happiness attending it, that it is as durable and extensive as the poem itself. Take some examples of it, in the description of the sun in a mourning coach upon the death of Queen Mary:

See Phœbus now, as once for Phaeton,

Has mask'd his face, and put deep mourning on;
Dark clouds his sable chariot do surround,
And the dull steeds stalk o'er the melancholy round.

Of Prince Arthur's soldiers drinking.

While rich burgundian wine, and bright champaign,
Chase from their minds the terror of the main.§

*Josephus, translated by Sir Roger L'Estrange.-W.

+ In such familiar phrases as these: "One good turn is the shoeing horn of another-He does me good in spite of my teeth -After a matter of eight years." And in Æsop, "The moon was in a heavy twitter." Collier's Antoninus was in the same smart taste. Thomas à-Kempis was translated by Dr Stanhope, whose primness is here noted. There is hardly any species of bad writing but what is exposed in some part or other of this little treatise, in which the justest rules are delivered under the mask of ridicule, fortius et melius, than in professed and serious critical discourses.-Dr WARTON.

Ambrose Philips.

Prince Arthur, p. 16,

whence we also learn, that burgundy and champaign make a man on shore despise a storm at sea. *

Of the Almighty encamping his regiments:

-He sunk a vast capacious deep,
Where he his liquid regiments does keep.
Thither the waves file off, and make their way,
To form the mighty body of the sea;

Where they encamp, and in their station stand,
Entrench'd in works of rock, and lines of sand. †

Of two armies on the point of engaging:

Yon armies are the cards which both must play;
At least come off a saver, if you may:
Throw boldly at the sum the gods have set;
These on your side will all their fortunes bet. ‡

All perfectly agreeable to the present customs and best fashions of our metropolis.

But the principal branch of the alamode is the PRURIENT; a style greatly advanced and honoured of late by the practice of persons of the first quality; and, by the encouragement of the ladies, not unsuccessfully introduced even into the drawingroom. Indeed its incredible progress and conquests may be compared to those of the great Sesostris, and are everywhere known by the same marks, the images of the genital parts of men or

*The author of the ancient ballad of "Cease rude Boreas" was however of the same opinion:

Where's the tempest now, who feels it?
None! the danger's drown'd in wine.

In fact, there is no absurdity in saying that wine obliterates the remembrance of past dangers, whether by sea or land; and this is one of the few instances in which Sir Richard's sense is wrested into nonsense by the satirist.

+ Blackmore, Ps. civ. p. 261.

Lee, Sophonisba.