pruritus, the "titillation of the generative faculty of the brain," and the person is said to conceive; now, such as conceive must bring forth. I have known a man thoughtful, melancholy, and raving, for divers days, who forthwith grew wonderfully easy, lightsome, and cheerful, upon a discharge of the peccant humour in exceeding purulent metre. Nor can I question but abundance of untimely deaths are occasioned for want of this laudable vent of unruly passions: yea, perhaps, in poor wretches (which is very lamentable) for mere want of pen, ink, and paper! From hence it follows that a suppression of the very worst poetry is of dangerous consequence to the state. We find by experience that the same humours which vent themselves in summer in ballads and sonnets are condensed by the winter's cold into pamphlets and speeches for and against the ministry: nay, I know not but many times a piece of poetry may be the most innocent composition of a minister himself.

It is therefore manifest that mediocrity ought to be allowed, yea indulged, to the good subjects of England. Nor can I conceive how the world has swallowed the contrary as a maxim upon the single authority of Horace. Why should the golden mean and quintessence of all virtues be deemed so offensive in this art? or coolness or mediocrity be so amiable a quality in a man, and so detestable in a poet? However, far be it from me to compare these writers with those great spirits who are born with a vivacité de pesanteur, or (as an English author calls it) an "alacrity of sinking;" and who by strength of nature alone can excel. All I mean is, to evince the necessity of rules to these lesser geniuses, as well as the usefulness of them to the greater.

CHAPTER IV.

THAT THERE IS AN ART OF THE BATHOS, or profund. WE come now to prove that there is an art of sinking in poetry. Is there not an architecture of vaults and cellars, as well as of lofty domes and pyramids? Is there not as much skill and labour in making ditches as in raising mounts? Is there not an art of diving as well as of flying? and will any sober practitioner affirm that a diving-engine is not of singular use in making him long-winded, assisting his descent, and furnishing him with more ingenious means of keeping under water?

If we search the authors of antiquity we shall find as few to have been distinguished in the true profund as in the true sublime. And the very same thing (as it appears from Longinus) had been imagined of that, as now of this, namely, that it was entirely the gift of nature. I grant that to excel in the bathos a genius is requisite; yet the rules of art must be allowed so far useful as to add weight, or, as I may say, hang on lead, to facilitate and enforce our descent, to guide us to the most advantageous declivities, and habituate our imagination to a depth of thinking. Many there are that can fall, but few can arrive at the felicity of falling gracefully; much more for a man who is among the lowest of the creation, at the very bottom of the atmosphere, to descend beneath himself, is not so easy a task, unless he calls in art to his assistance. It is with the bathos as with small beer, which is indeed vapid and insipid if left at large and let abroad; but being by our rules confined and well stopped, nothing grows so frothy, pert, and bouncing.

The sublime of nature is the sky, the sun, moon,

stars, &c. The profund of nature is gold, pearls, precious stones, and the treasures of the deep, which are inestimable as unknown. But all that lies between these, as corn, flowers, fruits, animals, and things for the mere use of man, are of mean price, and so common as not to be greatly esteemed by the curious; it being certain that anything of which we know the true use cannot be invaluable: which af fords a solution why common sense hath either been totally despised or held in small repute by the greatest modern critics and authors.

CHAPTER V.

OF THE TRUE GENIUS FOR THE PROFUND, AND EY WHAT IT IS CONSTITUTED.

AND I will venture to lay it down as the first maxim and corner-stone of this our art, that whoever would excel therein must studiously avoid, detest, and turn his head from all the ideas, ways, and workings of that pestilent foe to wit, and destroyer of fine figures, which is known by the name of common sense. His business must be to contract the true goût de tracers; and to acquire a most happy, uncommon, unaccountable way of thinking.

He is to consider himself as a grotesque painter, whose works would be spoiled by an imitation of nature or uniformity of design. He is to mingle bits of the most various or discordant kinds, landscape, history, portraits, animals, and connect them with a great deal of flourishing, by head or tail, as it shall please his imagination, and contribute to his principal end, which is to glare by strong oppositions of colours, and surprise by a contrariety of images.

Serpentes avibus geminentur, tigribus agni.-HOR. His design ought to be like a labyrinth, out of which nobody can get clear but himself. And since the great art of poetry is to mix truth with fiction, in order to join the credible with the surprising, our author shall produce the credible by painting nature in her lowest simplicity, and the surprising by contradicting common opinion. In the very same manner he will affect the marvellous; he will draw Achilles with the patience of Job; a prince talking like a jack-pudding; a maid of honour selling bargains; a footman speaking like a philosopher; and a fine gentleman like a scholar. Whoever is concollection of this kind, and at the same time form a versant in modern plays may make a most noble complete body of modern ethics and morality.

than that the world hath long been weary of natural Nothing seemed more plain to our great authors things. How much the contrary are formed to please is evident from the universal applause daily given to the admirable entertainments of harlequins and magicians on our stage. When an audience behold a coach turned into a wheelbarrow, a conjurer into an old woman, or a man's head where his heels should be, how are they struck with transport and delight! which can only be imputed to this cause, that each object is changed into that which hath been suggested to them by their own low ideas before.

He ought therefore to render himself master of this happy and anti-natural way of thinking to such a degree as to be able, on the appearance of any object, to furnish his imagination with ideas infinitely below it. And his eyes should be like unto the wrong end of a perspective glass, by which all the objects of nature are lessened.

For example; when a true genius looks upon the sky, he immediately catches the idea of a piece of blue lutestring, or a child's mantle :

The skies, whose spreading volumes scarce have room, Spun thin, and wove in nature's finest loom,

The new-born world in their soft lap embraced,
And all around their starry mantle cast."

If he looks upon a tempest he shall have an image of a tumbled bed, and describe a succeeding calm in this manner :—

The ocean joy'd to see the tempest fled,

New lays his waves, and smooths his ruffled bed.b

The triumphs and acclamation of the angels at the creation of the universe present to his imagination "the rejoicings on the lord-mayor's day;" and he beholds those glorious beings celebrating their Creator by huzzaing, making illuminations, and flinging squibs, crackers, and sky-rockets:

Glorious illuminations, made on high
By all the stars and planets of the sky,
In just degrees, and shining order placed,
Spectators charm'd, and the blest dwellings graced.
Through all the enlighten'd air swift fire-works flew,
Which with repeated shouts glad cherubs threw ;
Comets ascended with their sweeping train,
Then fell in starry showers and glittering rain:
In air ten thousand meteors blazing hung,
Which from th' eternal battlements were flung.

If a man who is violently fond of wit will sacrifice to that passion his friend or his God, would it not be a shame if he who is smit with the love of the bathos should not sacrifice to it all other transitory regards? You shall hear a zealous protestant deacon invoke a saint, and modestly beseech her to do more for us than Providence:

Look down, blest saint, with pity then look down,
Shed on this land thy kinder influence,

And guide us through the mists of Providence,
Lu which we stray.d.

Neither will he, if a goodly simile come in his way, scruple to affirm himself an eye-witness of things never yet beheld by man, or never in existence; as thus:

Thus have I seen in Araby the blest

A phoenix couch'd upon her funeral nest.

But to convince you that nothing is so great which a marvellous genius prompted by this laudable zeal is not able to lessen, hear how the most sublime of all beings is represented in the following images:First he is a PAINTER.

Sometimes the Lord of nature in the air
Spreads forth his clouds, his sable canvass, where
His pencil. dipp'd in heavenly colour bright,
Paints his fair rainbow, charming to the sight.
Now he is a CHEMIST.

Th' Almighty Chemist does his work prepare,
Pours down his waters on the thirsty plain,
Digests his lightning, and distils his rain.

Now he is a WRESTLER.

Me in his griping arms th' Eternal took,
And with such mighty force my body shook,
That the strong grasp my members sorely bruised,
Broke all my bones, and all my sinews loosed.
Now a RECRUITING OFFICER.

For clouds the sunbeams levy fresh supplies,
And raise recruits of vapours which arise,
Drawn from the seas, to muster in the skies!

Now a peaceable GUARANTEE.

In leagues of peace the neighbours did agree,
And to maintain them God was guarantee.

Prince Arthur, pp. 41, 42. b P. 14. © P. 50. N.B. In order to do justice to these great poets, our citations are taken from the best, the last, and most correct editions of their works. That which we use of "Prince Arthur" is in duodecimo, 1714, the fourth edition, revised.- POPE. Ambrose Philips on the death of queen Mary.-WARBURT. f Blackmore, opt. edit. duod. 1716, p. 172. Blackmore, ps. civ. p. 263. h P. 75. P. 170.

e Anon.

k P. 70.

Then he is an ATTORNEY.

Job, as a vile offender, God indites,
Aud terrible decrees against me writes.
God will not be my advocate,

My cause to manage or debate."

In the following lines he is a GOLDBEATER. Who the rich metal beats, and then with care Unfolds the golden leaves to gild the fields of air.b Then a FULLER.

-Th' exhaling reeks, that secret rise, Borne on rebounding sunbeams through the skies, Are thicken'd, wrought, and whiten'd, till they grow A heavenly fleece.

A MERCER, or PACKER.

Didst thou one end of air's wide curtain hold,
And help the bales of æther to unfold;
Say, which cerulean pile was by thy hand unroll'd?
A BUTLER.

He measures all the drops with wondrous skill,
Which the black clouds his floating bottles fill.
And a BAKER.

God in the wilderness his table spread,
And in his airy ovens baked their bread.

CHAPTER VI.

OF THE SEVERAL KINDS OF GENIUSES IN THE PROFUND, AND THE MARKS AND CHARACTERS OF EACH.

I DOUBT not but the reader, by this cloud of exam, ples, begins to be convinced of the truth of our assertion that the bathos is an art, and that the genius of no mortal whatever, following the mere ideas of nature and unassisted with an habitual, nay, laborious peculiarity of thinking, could arrive at images so wonderfully low and unaccountable. The great author, from whose treasury we have drawn all these instances (the father of the bathos, and indeed the Homer of it), has, like that immortal Greek, confined his labours to the greater poetry, and thereby left room for others to acquire a due share of praise in inferior kinds. Many painters who would never hit a nose or an eye have with felicity copied a smallpox, or been admirable at a toad or a red-herrring; and seldom are we without geniuses for still-life, which they can work up and stiffen with incredible accuracy.

A universal genius rises not in age; but when he rises, armies rise in him! he pours forth five or six epic poems with greater facility than five or six pages can be produced by an elaborate and servile copier after nature or the ancients. It is affirmed by Quintilians that the same genius which made Germanicus so great a general would, with equal application, have made him an excellent heroic poet. In like manner, reasoning from the affinity there appears between arts and sciences, I doubt not but an active catcher of butterflies, a careful and fanciful pattern-drawer, an industrious collector of shells, a laborious and tuneful bagpiper, or a diligent breeder of tame rabbits, might severally excel in their respective parts of the bathos.

I shall range these confined and less copious geniuses under proper classes, and (the better to give their pictures to the reader) under the names of animals of some sort or other; whereby he will be

Blackmore, p. 61. P.181. P. 18. Psal. p. 174. P.131. It is remarkable that Swift highly commends Blackmore in more than one place; from whom Dr. Johnson strangely asserts that Pope might have learnt the art of reasoning in verse, exemplified in the "Poem on Creation;" but Ambrose Philips related that Blackmore, as he proceeded in his poem, communicated it from time to time to a club of wits, his associates, and that every man contributed as he could, either improvement or correction: so that there are perhaps nowhere in the book thirty lines together that now stand as they were originally written. -DR. WARTON.

Blackmore, " Song of Moses," p. 218.
In a fine passage of the tenth book,

VOL. I.

The skies, whose spreading volumes scarce have room, Spun thin, and wove in nature's finest loom,

The new-born world in their soft lap embraced,
And all around their starry mantle cast."

If he looks upon a tempest he shall have an image of a tumbled bed, and describe a succeeding calm in this manner :

The ocean joy'd to see the tempest fled,

New lays his waves, and smooths his ruffled bed.b

The triumphs and acclamation of the angels at the creation of the universe present to his imagination "the rejoicings on the lord-mayor's day;" and he beholds those glorious beings celebrating their Creator by huzzaing, making illuminations, and flinging squibs, crackers, and sky-rockets:

Glorious illuminations, made on high
By all the stars and planets of the sky,
In just degrees, and shining order placed,
Spectators charm'd, and the blest dwellings graced.
Through all the enlighten'd air swift fire-works flew,
Which with repeated shouts glad cherubs threw ;
Comets ascended with their sweeping train,
Then fell in starry showers and glittering rain:
In air ten thousand meteors blazing hung,
Which from th' eternal battlements were flung.

If a man who is violently fond of wit will sacrifice to that passion his friend or his God, would it not be a shame if he who is smit with the love of the bathos should not sacrifice to it all other transitory regards? You shall hear a zealous protestant deacon invoke a saint, and modestly beseech her to do more for us than Providence:

Look down, blest saint, with pity then look down,
Shed on this land thy kinder influence,
And guide us through the mists of Providence,
In which we stray.d.

Neither will he, if a goodly simile come in his way, scruple to affirm himself an eye-witness of things never yet beheld by man, or never in existence; as thus:

Thus have I seen in Araby the blest

A phoenix couch'd upon her funeral nest.

But to convince you that nothing is so great which a marvellous genius prompted by this laudable zeal is not able to lessen, hear how the most sublime of all beings is represented in the following images:First he is a PAINTER.

Sometimes the Lord of nature in the air
Spreads forth his clouds, his sable canvass, where
His pencil, dipp'd in heavenly colour bright,
Paints his fair rainbow, charming to the sight.
Now he is a CHEMIST.

Th' Almighty Chemist does his work prepare,
Pours down his waters on the thirsty plain,
Digests his lightning, and distils his rain.

Now he is a WRESTLER.

Me in his griping arms th' Eternal took,
And with such mighty force my body shook,
That the strong grasp my members sorely bruised,
Broke all my bones, and all my sinews loosed.
Now a RECRUITING OFFICER.

For clouds the sunbeams levy fresh supplies,
And raise recruits of vapours which arise,
Drawn from the seas, to muster in the skies.!

Now a peaceable GUARANTEE.

In leagues of peace the neighbours did agree,
And to maintain them God was guarantee.k

• Prince Arthur, pp. 41, 42.

⚫ P. 50.

b P. 14. N.B. In order to do justice to these great poets, our citations are taken from the best, the last, and most correct editions of their works. That which we use of "Prince Arthur" is in duodecimo, 1714, the fourth edition, revised.- POPE.

Ambrose Philips on the death of queen Mary.-WARBURT. e Anon. f Blackmore, opt. edit. duod, 1716, p. 172. s Blackmore, ps. civ. p. 263. b P. 75. P. 170.

k P. 70.

VOL. I.

Then he is an ATTORNEY.

Job, as a vile offender, God indites,
Aud terrible decrees against me writes.
God will not be my advocate,

My cause to manage or debate."

In the following lines he is a GOLDBEATER. Who the rich metal beats, and then with care Unfolds the golden leaves to gild the fields of air.b Then a FULLER.

-Th' exhaling reeks, that secret rise, Borne on rebounding sunbeams through the skies, Are thicken'd, wrought, and whiten'd, till they grow A heavenly fleece.

A MERCER, or PACKER.

Didst thou one end of air's wide curtain hold,
And help the bales of æther to unfold;

Say, which cerulean pile was by thy hand unroll'd?
A BUTLER.

He measures all the drops with wondrous skill,
Which the black clouds his floating bottles fill.
And a BAKER.

God in the wilderness his table spread,
And in his airy ovens baked their bread.

CHAPTER VI.

OF THE SEVERAL KINDS OF GENIUSES IN THE PROFUND, AND THE MARKS AND CHARACTERS OF EACH. I DOUBT not but the reader, by this cloud of exam, ples, begins to be convinced of the truth of our assertion that the bathos is an art, and that the genius of no mortal whatever, following the mere ideas of nature and unassisted with an habitual, nay, laborious peculiarity of thinking, could arrive at images so wonderfully low and unaccountable. The great author, from whose treasury we have drawn all these

instances (the father of the bathos, and indeed the Homer of it), has, like that immortal Greek, confined his labours to the greater poetry, and thereby left room for others to acquire a due share of praise in inferior kinds. Many painters who would never hit a nose or an eye have with felicity copied a smallpox, or been admirable at a toad or a red-herrring; and seldom are we without geniuses for still-life, which they can work up and stiffen with incredible accuracy.

A universal genius rises not in age; but when he rises, armies rise in him! he pours forth five or six epic poems with greater facility than five or six pages can be produced by an elaborate and servile copier after nature or the ancients. It is affirmed by Quintilians that the same genius which made Germanicus so great a general would, with equal application, have made him an excellent heroic poet. In like manner, reasoning from the affinity there appears between arts and sciences, I doubt not but an active catcher of butterflies, a careful and fanciful pattern-drawer, an industrious collector of shells, a laborious and tuneful bagpiper, or a diligent breeder of tame rabbits, might severally excel in their respective parts of the bathos.

I shall range these confined and less copious geniuses under proper classes, and (the better to give their pictures to the reader) under the names of animals of some sort or other; whereby he will be P.131.

Blackmore, p. 61. P.181. P. 18. Psal. p. 174. It is remarkable that Swift highly commends Blackmore in more than one place; from whom Dr. Johnson strangely asserts that Pope might have learnt the art of reasoning in verse, exemplified in the "Poem on Creation;" but Ambrose Philips related that Blackmore, as he proceeded in his poem, communicated it from time to time to a club of wits, his associates, and that every man contributed as he could, either improvement or correction; so that there are perhaps nowhere in the book thirty lines together that now stand as they were originally written. -DR. WARTON. f Blackmore, Song of Moses," p. 218. In a fine passage of the tenth book.

"

enabled at the first sight of such as shall daily come forth to know to what kind to refer, and with what authors to compare them.a

1. The Flying Fishes: these are writers who now and then rise upon their fins and fly out of the profund; but their wings are soon dry, and they drop down to the bottom. G. S., A. H., C. G.c

2. The Swallows are authors that are eternally skimming and fluttering up and down, but all their agility is employed to catch flies. L. T., W. P., Lord H.e

3. The Ostriches are such whose heaviness rarely permits them to raise themselves from the ground; their wings are of no use to lift them up, and their motion is between flying and walking; but then they run very fast. D. F. L. E.f the hon. E. H.g

4. The Parrots are they that repeat another's words in such a hoarse odd voice, as makes them seem their own. W. B., W. S., C. C., the reverend D. D.

5. The Didappers are authors that keep themselves long out of sight under water, and come up now and then where you least expected them. L. W., G. D. esq., the hon. sir W. Ÿ.

k

6. The Porpoises are unwieldy and big; they put all their numbers into a great turmoil and tempest, but whenever they appear in plain light (which is seldom) they are only shapeless and ugly monsters. I. D., C. G., I. O.n

7. The Frogs are such as can neither walk nor fly, but can leap and bound to admiration; they live generally in the bottom of a ditch, and make a great noise whenever they thrust their heads above water. E. W., I. M.P esq., T. D. gent.

8. The Eels are obscure authors that wrap themselves up in their own mud, but are mighty nimble and pert. L. W.,' L. T., P. M.,' general C.

9. The Tortoises are slow and chill, and, like pastoral writers, delight much in gardens: they have for the most part a fine embroidered shell, and underneath it a heavy lump. A. P.," W. B., L. E., the right hon. E. of S.

These are the chief characteristics of the bathos, and in each of these kinds we have the comfort to be blessed with sundry and manifold choice spirits in this our island.

CHAPTER VII.

OF THE PROFUND, WHEN IT CONSISTS IN THE THOUGHT.

WE have already laid down the principles upon which our author is to proceed, and the manner of forming his thought by familiarizing his mind to the lowest objects; to which it may be added, that vulgar conversation will greatly contribute. There is no

This was the chapter which gave so much offence, and excited such loud clamours against our author by his introduction of these initial letters, which he in vain asserted were placed at random, and meant no particular writers, which was not believed. These initial letters cannot now be authentically filled up.-DR. WARTON.

b Aaron Hill thought that he was designated under the letters A. H., although," says Pope, in reply, "every letter in the alphabet was put in the same manner, and in truth (except some few) those letters were set at random to occasion what they did occasion-the suspicion of bad and jealous writers, of which number I could never reckon Mr. Hill, and most of whose names I did not know."

question but the garret or the printer's boy may often be discerned in the compositions made in such scenes and company; and much of Mr. Curll himself has been insensibly infused into the works of his learned writers.

The physician, by the study and inspection of urine and ordure, approves himself in the science; and in like sort should our author accustom and exercise his imagination upon the dregs of nature.

This will render his thoughts truly and fundsmentally low, and carry him many fathoms beyond mediocrity. For, certain it is (though some lukewarm heads imagine they may be safe by temporizing between the extremes) that where there is not a triticalness or mediocrity in the thought, it can never be sunk into the genuine and perfect bathos by the most elaborate low expression: it can at most be only carefully obscured or metaphorically debased. But it is the thought alone that strikes, and gives the whole that spirit which we admire and stare at. For instance, in that ingenious piece on a lady's drinking the Bath waters:—

She drinks she drinks! behold the matchless dame
To her 'tis water, but to us 'tis flame!

Thus fire is water, water fire by turns,

And the same stream at once both cools and burns."

What can be more easy and unaffected than the dic. tion of these verses? It is the turn of thought alone, and the variety of imagination, that charm and surprise us. And when the same lady goes into the bath, the thought (as in justice it ought) goes still deeper :

Venus beheld her, 'midst her crowd of slaves,

And thought herself just risen from the waves.

How much out of the way of common sense is this reflection of Venus not knowing herself from the lady.

Of the same nature is that noble mistake of a frighted stag in a full chase, who, saith the poetHears his own feet, and thinks they sound like more; And fears the hind feet will o'ertake the fore.

So astonishing as these are, they yield to the following, which is profundity itself:

None but himself can be his parallel.

Unless it may seem borrowed from the thought of that master of a show in Smithfield who writ in large letters of the picture of his elephant

This is the greatest elephant in the world, except himself. However, our next instance is certainly an original. Speaking of a beautiful infant :

So fair thou art, that if great Cupid be
A child, as poets say, sure thou art he!
Fair Venus would mistake thee for her own,
Did not thy eyes proclaim thee not her son.
There all the lightnings of thy mother's shine,
And with a fatal brightness kill in thine.

First he is Cupid, then he is not Cupid; first Venus would mistake him, then she would not mistake him; next his eyes are his mother's; and lastly, they are not his mother's, but his own.

Another author, describing a poet that shines forth amid a circle of critics :

Thus Phoebus through the zodiac takes his way,
And amid monsters rises into day.