Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/26

20 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 Bathwaters:

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 diction 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 chace, who, saith the poet —

Hears 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 over the picture of his elephant,

This is the greatest elephant in the world, except himself. How-