this question: "How would Sir Richard have said this? do I express myself as simply as Ambrose Philips? or flow my numbers with the quiet thoughtlessness of Mr Welsted ?"* But it may seem somewhat strange to assert, that our proficient should also read the works of those famous poets, who have excelled in the sublime: yet is not this a paradox. As Virgil is said to have read Ennius, out of his dunghill to draw gold; so may our author read Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden, for the contrary end, to bury their gold in his own dunghill. A true genius, when he finds any thing lofty or shining in them, will have the skill to bring it down, take off the gloss, or quite discharge the colour, by some ingenious circumstance or periphrase, some addition or diminution, or by some of those figures, the use of which we shall shew in our next chapter. The book of Job is acknowledged to be infinitely sublime, and yet has not the father of the bathos reduced it in every page? Is there a passage in all Virgil more painted up and laboured than the description of Etna in the third Æneid? Horrificis juxta tonat Ætna ruinis, Interdumque atram prorumpit ad æthera nubem, * Welsted was a man not absolutely devoid of fancy and poetical expression. But his poems were of that middling description, which may indeed easily find defenders, because they contain nothing very absurd, but which hardly can gain readers, since they exhibit as little that is attractive. + These two words, after he had said "Attollitque globos flammarum," are perhaps the only two in Virgil that may be called bombast and supertragical, ov7payixa, says Longinus, but παρατραγωδα. Interdum scopulos avulsaque viscera montis (I beg pardon of the gentle English reader, and such of our writers as understand not Latin.) Lo! how this is taken down by our British poet, by the single happy thought of throwing the mountain into a fit of the colic: Etna, and all the burning mountains, find Their kindled stores with inbred storms of wind Blown up to rage; and roaring out complain, As torn with inward gripes, and tort'ring pain: Lab'ring, they cast their dreadful vomit round, And with their melted bowels spread the ground. * Horace, in search of the sublime, struck his head against the stars; † but Empedocles, to fathom the Perhaps we have not in our language a more striking example of a true turgid expression and genuine fustain and bombast, than in the following lines of Nat Lee's Alexander the Great, who is introduced saying, "When Glory, like the dazzling eagle, stood And I myself appeared the leading God!" Is it to be conceived that Dr Warburton affirmed, in a long note on the First Epistle of Horace, b. ii. that "these six lines contain not only the most sublime, but the most judicious imagery that poetry could conceive or paint?" I thought that a note which contained so outrageous a paradox, and so totally inconsistent with true taste and solid judgment, ought not to be retained.-Dr WARTON. * Prince Arthur, p. 75. +Sublimi feriam sidera vertice." And so did the writer of the following lines, in a well-known Tragedy: "Should the fierce North, upon his frozen wings, Thence should my fury drag him down to tortures." profund, threw himself into Etna. And who but would imagine our excellent modern had also been there from this description? Imitation is of two sorts; the first is, when we force to our own purposes the thought of others; the second consists in copying the imperfections or blemishes of celebrated authors. I have seen a play professedly writ in the style of Shakespeare, wherein the resemblance lay in one single line. And so good morrow t'ye, good master lieutenant.* And sundry poems in imitation of Milton, where, with the utmost exactness, and not so much as one exception, nevertheless was constantly nathless, t embroidered was broidered, hermits were eremites, disdained 'sdeigned, shady umbrageous, enterprize emprize, pagan paynim, pinions pennons, sweet dulcet, orchards orchats, bridge-work pontifical; nay her was hir, and their was thir, through the whole poems. And in very deed, there is no other way, by which the true modern poet could read to any * The line is from Rowe's tragedy of Lady Jane Gray. There is a peculiar absurdity in the play, the whole dramatic language of Bishop Gardiner being cast upon an antique mould, in imitation of the old dramatists, while the other characters speak the flowery fluttering sort of blank verse peculiar to Rowe and his period. The same incongruity may be remarked in Jane Shore, where Gloucester's dialect is approximated as nearly the language of Shakespeare, as the adoption of quaint and antiquated expressions, and the oath "by the holy Paul" could render it, whereas Hastings and all the others talk like courtiers of Louis XIV. + He alluded particularly to Philips's Cyder, of which he often expressed a strong disapprobation, and particularly on account of these antiquated words. He often quoted the following line as not English: "Administer their tepid genial airs." Cyder, b. ii. purpose the works of such men as Milton and Shakespeare. It may be expected, that, like other critics, I should next speak of the passions: but as the main end and principal effect of the bathos is to produce tranquillity of mind (and sure it is a better design to promote sleep than madness), we have little to say on this subject. Nor will the short bounds of this discourse allow us to treat at large of the emollients and opiates of poesy; of the cool, and the manner of producing it; or of the methods used by our authors in managing the passions. I shall but transiently remark, that nothing contributes so much to the cool, as the use of wit in expressing passion; the true genius rarely fails of points, conceits, and proper similes on such occasions: this we may term the pathetic epigrammatical, in which even puns are made use of with good success. Hereby our best authors have avoided throwing themselves or their readers into any indecent transports. But, as it is sometimes needful to excite the passions of our antagonist in the polemic way, the true students in the law have constantly taken their methods from low life, where they observed, that to move anger, use is made of scolding and railing; to move love, of bawdry; to beget favour and friendship, of gross flattery; and to produce fear, of calumniating an adversary with crimes obnoxious to the state. As for shame, it is a silly passion, of which as our authors are incapable themselves, so they would not produce it in others. CHAP. X. OF TROPES AND FIGURES: AND FIRST OF THE VARIEGATING, CONFOUNDING, AND REVERSING FIGURes. BUT we proceed to the figures. We cannot too earnestly recommend to our authors the study of the abuse of speech. They ought to lay down as a principle, to say nothing in the usual way, but (if possible) in the direct contrary. Therefore the figures must be so turned, as to manifest that intri cate and wonderful cast of head, which distinguishes all writers of this kind: or (as I may say) to refer exactly the mould, in which they were formed, in all its inequalities, cavities, obliquities, odd crannies, and distortions. It would be endless, nay impossible, to enumerate all such figures, but we shall content ourselves * Another figure which greatly contributes to the Bathos might here be added, which Longinus, in his third section, calls the Parenthyrsus; a kind of violence and emotion, ill-timed and out of season, and disproportioned to the subject; into which good writers, nay Horace himself, is said to have fallen. When he says, that even as the most superb and useful monuments of human skill and regal magnificence, the making new ports, the draining of marshes, the altering the course of rivers, the building moles, and other vast and expensive works, alter and decay; so do words and current expressions: "Debemur morti nos nostraque -Moitalia facta peribunt, Nedum sermonum stet honos et gratia vivax." "The objects by which this decay of words are illustrated are too large and important for the occasion." HOR. Art of Poetry, I. 63. See Blondell's Comparison of Horace and Pindar. Dr WARTON. |