Now he is a WRESTLER. Me in his griping arms th' eternal took, Now a RECRUITING OFFICER. For clouds the sunbeams levy fresh supplies, Now a peaceable GUARANTEE. In leagues of peace the neighbours did agree, Then he is an ATTORNEY. Job, as a vile offender, God indites, In the following lines he is a GOLDBEATER. Who the rich metal beats, and then with care Then a FULLER. th' exhaling reeks, that secret rise, Born on rebounding sunbeams through the skies, A MERCER, or PACKER. Didst thou one end of air's wide curtain hold, And help the bales of Æther to unfold; Say, which cærulean pile was by thy hand unroll'd * ? A BUTLER. He measures all the drops with wondrous skill, And a BAKER. God in the wilderness his table spread, CHAP. 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 examples, 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, + P. 131. *Black. Psal. p. 174. con confined his labours to the greater poetry, and thereby left room for others to acquire a due share of praise in inferiour kinds. Many painters, who could never hit a nose or an eye, have with felicity copied a smallpox, or been admirable at a toad or a redherring and seldom are we without geniuses for stilllife, which they can work up and stiffen with incredible accuracy. A universal genius rises not in an 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 Quintilian, 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 patterndrawer, an industrious collector of shells, a laborious and tuneful bag-piper, 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 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. 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. VOL. XVII. C 2. The 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. 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. the hon. E. H. 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. Y. 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. 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. 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 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. CHAP. 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 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. Curl 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 fundamentally 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, C 2 |