This author, in riper years, is guilty of a much greater deviation from the rule. Dulness may be imagined a deity or idol, to be worshipped by bad writers; but then some sort of disguise is requisite, some bastard virtue must be bestowed, to make such worship in some degree excusable. Yet in the Dunciad, Dulness, without the least disguise, is made the object of worship. The mind rejects such a fiction as unnatural; for dulness is a defect, of which even the dullest mortal is ashamed:

Then he: Great tamer of all human art!

First in my care, and ever at my heart;
Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend,
With whom my Muse began, with whom shall end,
Ever since Sir Fopling's periwig was praise.
To the last honors of the Bull and Bays!
O thou! of bus'ness the directing soul!
To this our head, like bias to the bowl,

Which as more pond'rous, made its aim more true,
Obliquely waddling to the mark in view :
O! ever gracious to perplex'd mankind,
Still spread a healing mist before the mind:
And, lest we err by Wit's wild dancing light,
Secure us kindly in our native night.
Or, if to wit a coxcomb make pretence,
Guard the sure barrier between that and sense;
Or quite unravel all the reasoning thread,
And hang some curious cobweb in its stead!
As, forced from wind-guns, lead itself can fly,
And pond'rous slugs cut swiftly through the sky;
As clocks to weight their nimble motion owe,
The wheels above urged by the load below:
Me Emptiness and Dulness could inspire,
And were my elasticity, and fire.

B. i. 168.

517. Fifthly, The enthusiasm of passion may have the effect to prolong passionate personification; but descriptive personification cannot be dispatched in too few words: a circumstantiate description dissolves the charm, and makes the attempt to personify appear ridiculous. Homer succeeds in animating his darts and arrows; but such personification spun out in a French translation, is mere burlesque :

Et la flèche en furie, avide de son sang,

Part, vole à lui, l'atteint, et lui perce le flanc.

Horace says happily,

Post equitem sedet atra Cura.

Observe how this thought degenerates by being diviaed, like the former, into a number of minute parts:

Un fou rempli d'erreurs, que le trouble accompagne
Et malade à la ville ainsi qu'à la campagne,

En vain monte à cheval pour tromper son ennui,
La Chagrin monte en croupe, et galope avec lui.

516. Preparation necessary.-Criticism on The mson.-Limits to personification-Faulty examples from Shakspeare and Pope.

his

A poet, in a short and lively expression, may animate his muse, genius, and even his verse; but to animate his verse, and to address a whole epistle to it, as Boileau doth (Epistle x.), is insupportable. The following passage is not less faulty:

Her fate is whisper'd by the gentle breeze,
And told in sighs to all the trembling trees;
The trembling trees, in every plain and wood,
Her fate remurmur to the silver flood;
The silver flood, so lately calm, appears
Swell'd with new passion, and o'erflows with tears
The winds, and trees, and floods, her death deplore,
Daphne, our grief! our glory! now no more.

Pope's Pastorals, iv. 61.

Let grief or love have the power to animate the winds, the trees, the floods, provided the figure be dispatched in a single expression; even in that case, the figure seldom has a good effect; because grief or love of the pastoral kind, are causes rather too faint for so violent an effect as imagining the winds, trees, or floods, to be sensible beings. But when this figure is deliberately spread out, with great regularity and accuracy, through many lines, the reader, instead of relishing it, is struck with its ridiculous appearance.

SECTION II.

Apostrophe.

+

518. THIS figure and the former are derived from the same prin ciple. If, to humor a plaintive passion, we can bestow a momentary sensibility upon an inanimate object, it is not more difficult to be stow a momentary presence upon a sensible being who is absent:

Strike the harp in praise of Bragela, whom I left in the isle of mist, the spouse of my love. Dost thou raise thy fair face from the rock to find the sails of Cuchullin? The sea is rolling far distant, and its white foam shall deceive thee for my sails.-Retire, for it is night, my love, and the dark winds sigh in thy hair. Retire to the hall of my feasts, and think of the times that are past; for I will not return till the storm of war is gone. O Connal, speak of wars and arms, and send her from my mind; for lovely with her raven hair is the white-bosom'd daughter of Sorglan.-Fingal, b. i.

Speaking of Fingal absent :

Happy are thy people, O Fingal; thine arm shall fight their battles. Thou art the first in their dangers; the wisest in the days of their peace; thou speakest, and thy thousands obey; and armies tremble at the sound of thy steel, Happy are thy people, O Fingal.

This figure is sometimes joined with the former: things inanimate, to qualify them for listening to a passionate expostulation, are not only personified, but also conceived to be present:

517. Descriptive personification should be short. Examples,

That chase thee from thy country, and expose
Those tender limbs of thine to the event

Of non-sparing war? And is it I

Eneid, ii. 54.

That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou
Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark

Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers,

That ride upon the violent speed of fire,

Fly with false aim; pierce the still moving air
That sings with piercing; do not touch my lord.

All's Well that End's Well, Act III. Sc. 4.

And let them lift ten thousand swords, said Nathos, with a smile; the sons of car-borne Usnoth will never tremble in danger. Why dost thou roll with all thy foam, thou roaring sea of Ullin? why do ye rustle on your dark wings, ye whistling tempests of the sky? Do ye think, ye storms, that ye keep Nathos on the coast? No; his soul detains him, children of the night! Althos, bring my father's arms, &c.—Fingal.

Whither hast thou fled, O wind, said the king of Morven! Dost thou rustle in the chambers of the south, and pursue the shower in other lands? Why comest not thou to my sails, to the blue face of my seas? The foe is in the land of Morven, and the king is absent.-Fingal.

Hast thou left thy blue course in heaven, golden-haired son of the sky! The west hath opened its gates; the bed of thy repose is there. The waves gather to behold thy beauty; they lift their trembling heads; they see thee lovely in thy sleep, but they shrink away with fear. Rest in thy shadowy cave, O Sun! and let thy return be in joy.-Fingal.

Daughter of Heaven, fair art thon! the silence of thy face is pleasant. Thou comest forth in loveliness; the stars attend thy blue steps in the east. The clouds rejoice in thy presence, O Moon! and brighten their dark-brown sides. -Who is like thee in heaven, daughter of the night! The stars are ashamed in thy presence, and turn aside their sparkling eyes. Whither dost thou retire from thy course, when the darkness of thy countenance grows? Hast thou thy hall like Ossian? Dwellest thou in the shadow of grief? Have thy sisters fallen from heaven? and are they who rejoiced with thee at night no more? Yes, they have fallen, fair light; and often dost thou retire to mourn.-But thou thyself shalt one night fail; and leave thy blue path in heaven. The stars will then lift their heads; they, who in thy presence were ashamed, wit rejoice.-Fingal.

This figure, like all others, requires an agitation of mind. In plain narrative, as, for example, in giving the genealogy of a family, it has no good effect:

-Fauno Picus pater: isque parentem

Te, Saturne, refert; tu sanguinis ultimus auctor.-Eneid, vii. 48.

SECTION III.
Hyperbole.

519. In this figure, by which an object is magnified or diminished beyond truth, we have another effect of the foregoing principle. An

518. Define apostrophe. With what other figure is it often joined? The state of mind it requires.

object of an uncommon size, either very great of its kind or very little, strikes us with surprise; and this emotion produces a momentary conviction that the object is greater or less than it is in reality (see chapter viii.). The same effect, precisely, attends figurative grandeur or littleness; and hence the hyperbole, which expresses that momentary conviction. A writer, taking advantage of this natural delusion, warms his description greatly by the hyperbole; and the reader, even in his coolest moments, relishes the figure, being sensible that it is the operation of nature upon s glowing fancy.

It cannot have escaped observation, that a writer is commonly more successful in magnifying by an hyperbole than in diminishing. The reason is, that a minute object contracts the mind, and fetters the power of imagination; but that the mind, dilated and inflamed with a grand object, moulds objects for its gratification with great facility. Longinus, with respect to diminishing hyperbole, quotes the following ludicrous thought from a comic poet: "He was owner of a bit of ground no larger than a Lacedemonian letter." (Chapter xxxi. of his Treatise on the Sublime.) But, for the reason now given, the hyperbole has by far the greater force in magnifying objects; of which take the following examples:

For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.--Genesis, xiii. 15, 16.

Illa vel intactæ segetis per summa volaret

Gramina: nec teneras cursu læsisset aristas.-Eneid, vii. 808.

-Atque imo barathri ter gurgite vastos

Sorbet in abruptum fluctus, rursusque subauras

Erigit alternos, et sidera verberat undâ.-Ibid. iii. 421.

-Horrificis juxta tonat Etna ruinis,

Interdumque atram prorumpit ad æthera nubem,

Turbine fumantem piceo et candente favilla:

Attollitque globos flammarum, et sidera lambit.—Ibid. iii. 571.

Speaking of Polyphemus:

Sidera.

-Ipse arduus, altaque pulsat

Ibid. iii. 619.

When he speaks,

The air, a charter'd libertine, is still.-Henry V. Act I. Sc. 1.

Now shield with shield, with helmet helmet closed,

To armor armor, lance to lance opposed.

Host against host with shadowy squadrons drew,

The sounding darts in iron tempests flew.

Victors and vanquish'd join promiscuous cries,

And shrilling shouts and dying groans arise:

With streaming blood the slippery fields are dyed,

And slaughter'd heroes swell the dreadful tide.-Iliad, iv. 508.

519. Define hyperbole. Why it is easier to magnify than to diminish by hyperbola The figure, natural.

520. Having examined the nature of this figure, and the principle on which it is erected, I proceed, as in the first section, to the rules by which it ought to be governed. And, in the first place, it is a capital fault to introduce an hyperbole in the description of any thing ordinary or familiar; for in such a case it is altogether unnatural, being destitute of surprise, its only foundation. Take the following instance, where the subject is extremely familiar, viz., swimming to gain the shore after a shipwreck :

I saw him beat the surges under him,

And ride upon their backs; he trode the water,
Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted

The surge most swoln that met him: his bold head
'Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oar'd
Himself with his good arms, in lusty strokes,

To th' shore, that o'er his wave-borne basis bow'd,
As stooping to relieve him.

Tempest, Act II. Sc. 1.

In the next place, it may be gathered from what is said, that an hyperbole can never suit the tone of any dispiriting passion: sorrow in particular will never prompt such a figure; for which reason the following hyperboles must be condemned as unnatural :

K. Rich. Aumerle, thou weep'st, my tender-hearted cousin!
We'll make foul weather with despised tears:

Our sighs, and they, shall lodge the summer-corn,

And make a dearth in this revolting land.-Richard II. Act III. Sc. 6.

Draw them to Tyber's bank, and weep your tears

Into the channel, till the lowest stream

Do kiss the most exalted shores of all.—Julius Cæsar, Act I. Sc. 1.

Thirdly, A writer, if he wish to succeed, ought always to have the reader in his eye : he ought in particular never to venture a bold thought or expression till the reader be warned and prepared. For that reason an hyperbole in the beginning of a work can never be in its place. Example:

521. The nicest point of all is to ascertain the natural limits of an hyperbole, beyond which being overstrained, it hath a bad effect. Longinus, in the above-cited chapter, with great propriety of thought enters a caveat against an hyperbole of this kind: he compares it to a bow-string, which relaxes by overstraining, and produceth an effect directly opposite to what is intended. To ascertain any precise boundary would be difficult, if not impracticable. Mine shall be an humbler task, which is, to give a specimen of what I reckon overstrained hyperbole; and I shall be brief upon them, because examples are to be found everywhere: no fault is more common among writers of inferior rank, and instances are found even

520. Capital fault. The passion that is unsuited to hyperbole.-When a bold thought of expression may be ventured.