Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/35

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UT we proceed to the figures. We cannot too earnestly recommend to our authors the study of the abuse of speech. They ought to lay it down as a principle, to say nothing in the usual way, but (if possible) in the direct contrary. Therefore the figures must be so turned, as to manifest that intricate and wonderful cast of head, which distinguishes all writers of this kind: or (as I may say) to refer exactly the mould, in which they were formed, in all its inequalities, cavities, obliquities, odd crannies, and distortions.

It would be endless, nay impossible to enumerate all such figures; but we shall content ourselves to range the principal, which most powerfully contribute to the bathos, under three classes.

I. The variegating, confounding, or reversing tropes and figures.

II. The magnifying, and

III. The diminishing.

We cannot avoid giving to these the Greek or Roman names; but in tenderness to our countrymen and fellow writers, many of whom, however exquisite, are wholly ignorant of those languages, we have also explained them in our mother tongue.

Of the first sort, nothing so much conduces to the bathos, as the -