women. It consists wholly of metaphors drawn from two most fruitful sources or springs, the very bathos of the human body, that is to say and

***** hiatus magnus lachrymabilis * * * * And selling of bargains, and double entendre, and Κιβέρισμος and Ὀλδφείλδισμος, all derived from the said sources,

4. The FINICAL STYLE,*

which consists of the most curious, affected, mincing metaphors, and partakes of the alamode; as the following:

Of a brook dried by the sun.

Won by the summer's importuning ray,
Th' eloping stream did from her channel stray,
And with enticing sun-beams stole away. +

Of an easy death.

When watchful death shall on his harvest look,
And see thee, ripe with age, invite the hook;
He'll gently cut thy bending stalk, and thee
Lay kindly in the grave, his granary. +

Of trees in a storm.

Oaks whose extended arms the winds defy,
The tempest sees their strength, and sighs, and passes by.

Of water simmering over the fire.

The sparkling flames raise water to a smile,

Yet the pleas'd liquor pines, and lessens all the while. §

* In which Felton's Superficial Dissertation on the classics is written, who is very fearful to be thought a scholar, and makes an apology for quoting a common piece of Latin-Dr WARTON. + Blackmore, Job, p. 26. P. 23. § Anonymous, in Tonson's Miscellany, Part 6. p. 224.

Dean.

5. LASTLY, I shall place the CUMBROUS *, which moves heavily under a load of metaphors, and draws after it a long train of words; and the BUSKIN, or stately, frequently, and with great felicity, mixed with the former. For, as the first is the proper engine to depress what is high, so is the second to raise what is base and low to a ridiculous visibility. When both these can be done at once, then is the bathos in perfection; as when a man is set with his head downward and his breech upright, his degradation is complete one end of him is as high as ever, only that end is the wrong one. Will not every true lover of the profund be delighted to behold the most vul gar and low actions of life exalted in the following manner?

Who knocks at the door?

For whom thus rudely pleads my loud-tongued gate,
That he may enter?

See who is there?

Advance the fringed curtains of thy eyes,

And tell me who comes yonder. †

Shut the door.

The wooden guardian of our privacy

Quick on its axle turn.

Bring my clothes.

Bring me what nature, tailor to the bear,
To man himself deny'd; she gave me cold,
But would not give me clothes.

* This is the fault of two eminent writers, who at the same time abound in transcendent beauties, and whom for that reason it is less invidious to mention, Thomson and Johnson; and I fear even Milton has furnished an example:

"I hear the sound of words, their sense the air
Dissolves, unjointed, e'er it reach my ear."

+ Tempest.

VOL. XIII.

Samson Agonistes, v. 176.-Dr WARTON.

F

Light the fire.

Bring forth some remnant of Promethean theft,
Quick to expand th' inclement air congeal'd
By Boreas's rude breath.

Snuff the candle.

Yon' luminary amputation needs,

Thus shall you save its half-extinguished life.

Open the letter.

Wax! render up thy trust. *

Uncork the bottle, and chip the bread.
Apply thine engine to the spungy door :
Set Bacchus from his glassy prison free,
And strip white Ceres of her nut-brown coat t.

CHAP. XIII.

A PROJECT for the adVANCEMENT OF THE BATHOS.

THUS have I (my dear countrymen) with incredible pains and diligence discovered the hiden sources of the bathos, or, as I may say, broke open the abysses of this great deep. And having now established good and wholesome laws, what remains but that all true moderns, with their utmost might, do proceed to put the same in execution? In order whereto, I think I shall, in the second place, high ly deserve of my country, by proposing such a scheme as may facilitate this great end.

*Theobald, Double Falsehood.

+ These verses are his own.Dr WARTON.

As our number is confessedly far superior to that of the enemy, there seems nothing wanting but unanimity among ourselves. It is therefore humbly offered, that all, and every individual of the bathos, do enter into a firm association, and incorporate into one regular body, whereof every member, even the meanest, will someway contribute to the support of the whole; in' like manner as the weakest reeds, when joined in one bundle, become infrangible. To which end, our art ought to be put upon the same foot with other arts of this age. The vast improvement of modern manufactures, arises from their being divided into several branches, and parcelled out to several trades: for instance, in clockmaking one artist makes the balance, another the spring, another the crown wheels, a fourth the case, and the principal workman puts all together: to this economy we owe the perfection of our modern watches, and doubtless we also might that of our modern poetry and rhetoric, were the several parts branched out in like manner.

Nothing is more evident than that divers persons, no other way remarkable, have each a strong disposition to the formation of some particular trope or figure. Aristotle saith, that "the hyperbole is an ornament fit for young men of quality," accord ingly we find in those gentlemen a wonderful propensity toward it, which is marvellously improved by travelling. Soldiers also and seamen are very happy in the same figure. The periphrasis *, or circumlocution, is the peculiar talent of country farmers; the proverb and apologue, of old men at

* All this paragraph down to the words in it, "House of Commons," is wonderfully acute and satirical, especially the mentioning the Bear-garden.-Dr WARTON.

clubs; the ellipsis, or speech by half-words, of ministers and politicians; the aposiopesis of courtiers; the liotes, or diminution, of ladies, whisperers, and backbiters; and the anadiplosis of common criers and hawkers, who, by redoubling the same words, persuade people to buy their oysters, green hastings, or new ballads. Epithets may be found in great plenty at Billingsgate; sarcasm and irony learned upon the water; and the epiphonema, or exclamation, frequently from the bear-garden, and as frequently from the "Hear him" of the house of commons.

Now, each man applying his whole time and genius upon his particular figure, would doubtless attain to perfection; and when each became incorporated and sworn into the society (as hath been proposed), a poet or orator would have no more to do, but to send to the particular traders in each kind; to the metaphorist, for his allegories; to the simile-maker, for his comparisons; to the ironist, for his sarcasms; to the apothegamitist, for his sentences, &c. whereby a dedication or speech would be composed in a moment, the superior artist having nothing to do but to put together all the materials.

I therefore propose, that there be contrived, with all convenient dispatch, at the public expense, a rhetorical chest of drawers, consisting of three stories; the highest for the deliberative, the middle for the demonstrative, and the lowest for the judicial. These shall be divided into loci or places, being repositories for matter and argument in the several kinds of oration or writing; and every drawer shall again be subdivided into cells, resembling those of cabinets for rarities. The apartment for peace or war, and that of the liberty of the press, may, in a very few days be filled with several arguments perfectly new; and the vituperative partition will as easily be replenished with a most choice collection, en