Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/42

36 we have yet no name for them. In describing a country prospect,

I'd call them mountains, but can't call them so, For fear to wrong them with a name too low; While the fair vales beneath so humbly lie, That even humble seems a term too high.

III. The last class remains; of the diminishing. 1. the Climax (narrative), and figures where the second line drops quite short of the first, than which nothing creates greater surprize.

Under the tropicks is our language spoke, And part of Flanders hath receiv'd our yoke.

And thou Dalhoussy the great God of war, Lieutenant colonel to the earl of Mar.

Nor art nor nature has the force To stop its steady course, Nor Alps nor Pyrenæans keep it out —— Nor fortify'd redoubt.

At other times this figure operates in a larger extent; and when the gentle reader is in expectation of some great image, he either finds it surprisingly imperfect, or is presented with something low, or quite ridiculous: a surprise resembling that of a curious person in a cabinet of antique statues, who beholds on the pedestal the names of Homer, or Cato; but looking up finds Homer without a head, and nothing to be