3. The INFANTINE.

This is, when a poet grows so very simple, as to think and talk like a child. I shall take my examples from the greatest master in this way: hear how he fondles like a mere stammerer.

Little charm of placid mien,
Miniature of beauty's queen,
Hither British muse of mine,
Hither, all ye Grecian nine,
With the lovely graces three,
And your pretty nurseling see.

When the meadows next are seen,
Sweet enamel, white and green,
When again the lambkins play,
Pretty sportlings full of May,
Then the neck so white and round,
(Little neck with brilliants bound)
And thy gentleness of mind,
(Gentle from a gentle kind) &c.

Happy thrice, and thrice again,
Happiest he of happy men *, &c.

and the rest of those excellent lullabies of his composition.

How prettily he asks the sheep to teach him to bleat?

Teach me to grieve with bleating moan, my sheep †.

With no less simplicity does he suppose, that shepherdesses tear their hair and beat their breasts at their own deaths :

Ye brighter maids, faint emblems of my fair,
With looks cast down, and with dishevell'd hair,
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.

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

He whom loud cannon could not terrify,
Falls from the grandeur of his majesty ||.

Happy, merry as a king,

Sipping dew-you sip and sing §.

Where you easily perceive the nothingness of every second verse.

The noise returning with returning light,

What did it?

Dispers'd the silence, and dispell'd the night.

The glories of proud London to survey,
The sun himself shall rise-by break of day **.

5. The EXPLETIVE.

admirably exemplified in the epithets of many authors.

* Philips's Pastorals. + Ibid. + Phil. on Q Mary.

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,

All men his tomb, all men his sons adore,
And his sons 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'd thee,
O Sion, Sion, lovely name †.

6. The MACROLOGY and PLEONASM

are as 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.

The growth of meadows, and the pride of fields,
The food of armies and support of wars,
Refuse of swords, and gleanings of a fight,
Lessen his 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.

Break through the billows, and-divide the main ||.
In smoother numbers, and-in softer verse.

Divide and part-the sever'd world-in two §.

With ten thousand others equally musical, and plentifully flowing through most of our celebrated modern

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.

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 blessed 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 cited author, who though otherwise by no means of our rank, seemed once in his life to have a mind to be simple.

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 lived the third to see t.

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

That I may know, if thou my pray'r deny,
The most despised of all the gods am I ||.

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:

I leave the arts of poetry and verse

To them that practise them with more success.
Of greater truths I now prepare to tell,
And so at once, dear friend and muse, farewel .

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 ‡‡.