To whom commiffions I have given,

To

manage

there the interefts of heaven:

Ye holy heralds, who proclaim

Or war or peace, in mine your master's name :
Ye pioneers of heaven, prepare a road,
Make it plain, direct and broad;

For I in perfon will my people head;

For the divine deliverer

Will on his march in majefty appear,
And needs the aid of no confed'rate power.

Under the article of the Confounding, we rank

1. The MIXTURE OF FIGURES,

which raises so many images, as to give you no image at all. But its principal beauty is when it gives an unexpected picture of Winter.

fort is the following:

Of this

P The gaping clouds pour lakes of fulphur down,
Whofe livid flashes fickning funbeams drown.

What a noble Confufion? clouds, lakes, brimftone, flames, fun-beams, gaping, pouring, fick. ning, drowning! all in two lines.

2. The JARGON.

Thy head fhall rife, tho' buried in the duft,
And 'midft the clouds his glittering turrets thrust.

P Pr. Arthur, p. 37.

Jub, p. 107.

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

Upon the shore, as frequent as the fand,

To meet the Prince, the glad Dimetians ftand. Quere, Where these Dimetians ftood? and of what fize they were? Add alfo to the Jargon fuch as the following.

Deftruction's empire shall no longer laft,
And Defolation lye for ever waste.

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

But for Variegation nothing is more useful than
3. The PARANOMASIA, or PUN,

where a Word, like the tongue of a jackdaw, fpeaks twice as much by being fplit: As this of Mr. Dennis w,

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 floop,
She has the whole Horizon for her boop.

Pr. Arthur, f. 157.
Poems 1653, P. 131

8 Job, p. 89. t T. Cook, poems. * Welfted, Poems, Acon and Lavin.

:

4. The ANTITHESIS, OF SEE-SAW, whereby Contraries and Oppofitions are ballanced in fuch a way, as to caufe a reader to remain fuf. pended between them, to his exceeding delight and recreation. Such are thefe, on a lady who made herself appear out of fize, by hiding a young prin

cefs under her cloaths.

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

On the Maids of Honour in mourning :

2 Sadly they charm, and difmally they please. His eyes fo bright

2 Let in the object and let out the light. D The Gods look pale to fee us look fo red.

C

The Fairies and their Queen

In mantles blue came tripping o'er the green.
d All nature felt a reverential shock,
The fea ftood ftill to fee the mountains rock.

y Waller.

Alex.

z Steel on Queen Mary. a Quarles. c Phil, Paft.

d Black. Job, p. 176.

**Lee,

СНАР. 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 fame time: His Thought will appear in a true mift, and very unlike what is in nature. It must always be remember'd that Darknefs 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 visible.

The chief Figure of this fort is,

1. The HYPERBOLE, or Impoffible.

For inftance of a Lion;

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

Of a Lady at Dinner.

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

e Vet. Aut.

Of the fame.

Th` obfcureness of her birth Cannot eclipfe the luftre of her eyes, Which make her all one light.

Of a Bull-baiting.

Up to the ftars the sprawling maftives fly,
And add new monsters to the frighted sky.

Of a Scene of Mifery.

h 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 thofe hundred eyes.

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

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

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

f Theob. Double Falfhood.

Blackm.

h Anon.