Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/27

Rh 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 criticks,

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

What a peculiarity is here of invention! the author's pencil, like the wand of Circe, turns all into monsters at a stroke. A great genius takes things in the lump, without stopping at minute considerations: in vain might the ram, the bull, the goat, the lion, the crab, the scorpion, the fishes, all stand in its way, as mere natural animals: much more might it be pleaded, that a pair of scales, an old man, and two innocent children, were no monsters: there were only the centaur and the maid, that could be esteemed out of nature. But what of that? with a boldness peculiar to these daring geniuses, what he found not monsters, he made so. Rh