Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/29

Rh How cautious and particular! "he had (says our author) so many herds, which herds thrived so well, and thriving so well gave so much milk, and that milk produced so much butter, that, if he did not, he might have washed his feet in it."

The ensuing description of Hellis no less remarkable in the circumstances.

In flaming heaps the raging ocean rolls, Whose livid waves involve despairing souls; The liquid burnings dreadful colours shew, Some deeply red and others faintly blue.

Could the most minute Dutch painter have been more exact? How inimitably circumstantial is this also of a war-horse!

His eyeballs burn, he wounds the smoking plain, And knots of scarlet riband deck his mane.

They brandish high in air their threat'ning staves, Their hands a woven guard of osier saves, In which they fix their hazel weapon's end.

Who would not think the poet had past his whole life at wakes in such laudable diversions? since he teaches us how to hold, nay how to make a cudgel!

Periphrase is another great aid to prolixity; being a diffused circumlocutory manner of expressing a known idea, which should be so mysteriously couched, as to give the reader the pleasure of guessing what it is, that the author can possibly mean; and a strange surprise, when he finds it. Rh