Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/49

Rh Frequently two or three words will do it effectually,

He from the clouds does the sweet liquor squeeze, That cheers the forest and the garden trees.

It is also useful to employ technical terms, which estrange your style from the great and general ideas of nature; and the higher your subject is, the lower should you search into mechanics for your expression. If you describe the garment of an angel, say that his linen was finely spun, and bleached on the happy plains. Call an army of angels, angelic cuirassiers ; and if you have occasion to mention a number of misfortunes, style them

Fresh troops of pains, and regimented woes.

is divided by the rhetoricians into the proper and figured. Of the figured we have already treated, and the proper is what our authors have nothing to do with. Of styles we shall mention only the principal, which owe to the moderns either their chief improvement, or entire invention.

Than which none is more proper to the bathos, as flowers, which are the lowest of vegetables, are most gaudy, and do many times grow in great plenty at the bottom of ponds and ditches.

A fine writer of this kind presents you with the following posie;

As