The Triumphs and Acclamations of the Angels, at the Creation of the Univerfe, prefent to his Imagation the Rejoicings of the Lord Mayor's Day;" and he beholds thofe glorious beings celebrating the Creator, by huzzaing, making illuminations, and flinging fquibs, crackers, and sky-rockets.

6 Glorious Illuminations, made on high,
By all the stars and planets of the Sky,
In just degrees, and shining order plac'd,
Spectators charm'd, and the bleft dwelling grac'd.
Thro' all th' enlighten'd air swift fire-works flew,
Which with repeated fhouts glad Cherubs threw.
Comets afcended with their fweeping train,
Then fell in flarry show'rs and glittring rain.
In air ten thousand meteors blazing hung,
Which from the eternal battlements were flung.

If a man who is violently fond of Wit, will facrifice to that paffion his friend or his God, would it not be a fhame, if he who is fmit with the love of the Bathos, fhould not facrifice to it all other tranfitory regards? You fhall hear a zealous Proteftant Deacon invoke a Saint, and modeftly befeech her to do more for us than Providence:

'Look down, blefs'd faint, with pity then look down, Shed on this land thy kinder influence,

And guide us through the mists of providence,
In which we fray.

Prince Arthur, p. 50.

W.

N. B. In order to do Juftice to thefe great Poets, our Citations are taken from the beft, the laft, and moft corre& Editions of their Works. That which we ufe of Prince Arthur, is in Duodecimo, 1714. The fourth Edition revised.

? A. Philips on the death of Queen Mary.

P.:

W.

Neither

Neither will he, if a goodly Simile come to his way, fcruple to affirm himself an eye-witnefs of things never yet beheld by man, or never in exiftence; as thus,

8 Thus have I feen in Araby the bless'd,

A Phoenix couch'd upon her fun'ral neft.

But to convince you that nothing is so great which a marvellous genius, prompted by this laudable zeal, is not able to leffen; hear how the most fublime of all Beings is reprefented in the following images:

FIRST HE IS A PAINTER.

• Sometimes the Lord of Nature in the air,
Spreads forth his clouds, his fable canvas, where
His pencil, dipp'd in heav'nly colour bright,
Paints his fair rain-bow, charming to the fight.

NOW HE IS A CHEMIST.

Th' Almighty Chemift does his work prepare.
Pours down his waters on the thirfly plain,
Digefts his lightning, and diftils his rain.

NOW HE IS A WRESTLER.

*Me in his griping arms th' Eternal took, And with fuch mighty force my body shook,

• Anon.

9 Blackm. opt. edit. duod. 1716. p. 172.

W.

The gravity of the folemn pedant Scriblerus is not at all kept up in this piece. His criticifms are not any more in chara&er than the Travels of Gulliver, erroneously afferted to be part of the plan intended to be pursued by Pope, Arbuthnot, and Swift.

No man ever attempted fo many epic poems as Blackmore; and few have written fo many verfes except perhaps Lopez de Vega, who is faid to have produced in all 21,316 verses.

Blackm. Pf. civ. p. 263. VOL. VI.

W.

That the ftrong grafp my members forely bruis'd,
Broke all my bones, and all my finews loos'd.

NOW A RECRUITING OFFICER.

For clouds, the fun-beams levy fresh Supplies,
And raife recruits of vapours, which arife
Drawn from the feas, to mufler in the fkies.

NOW A PEACEABLE GUARANTEE.

4 In leagues of peace the neighbours did agree, And to maintain them, God was Guarantee.

THEN HE IS AN ATTORNEY.

Job, as a vile offender, God indites,
And terrible decrees against me writes.
God will not be my advocate,
My caufe to manage or debate.

Blackm. p. 170.

W.

None of these images are more abfurd than where Dryden says, in the 281ft ftanza of his Annus Mirabilis, that the Almighty having looked down for fome time on the fire of London, at laft claps an extinguisher upon it:

"An hallow cryftal pyramid he takes

In firmamental waters dipt above;
Of it a broad extinguisher he makes,

And hrods the flames that to their quarry drove."

But another paffage in Dryden is carried to a ftill greater length of profaneness and abfurdity in his Hind and Panther; who speaks thus of the Creator:

The divine Blacksmith in th' abyss of light,
Yawning and lolling with a careless beat,
Struck out the mute creation at a heat;
But he work'd hard to hammer out our fouls,
He blew the bellows, and ftirr'd up the coals;
Long time he thought, and could not a fudden,

Knead up with unskimm'd milk this reasoning pudding."

Blackm. P. 70.

P. 61.

W.

In the following Lines he is a GOLDBEATER. 6 Who the rich metal beats, and then, with care, Unfolds the golden leaves, to gild the fields of air:

THEN A FULLER.

th' exhaling reeks that fecret rise,

Born on rebounding fun-beams through the skies, Are thicken'd, wrought, and whiten'd, till they grow A heavn'ly fleece.

A MERCER, OR PACKER.

Didft thou one end of air's wide curtain hold,
And help the Bales of Ether to unfold;

Say, which cerulian pile was by thy hand unroll'd?

A BUTLER.

He measures all the drops with wond'rous fkill, Which the black clouds, his floating Bottles, fill.

AND A BAKER.

1 God in the wilderness his table Spread, And in his airy Ovens bak'd their bread.

8 P. 174.

9 131.

W.

Blackm. p. 181. 7 P. 18. It is remarkable that Swift highly commends Blackmore in more than one place; from whom Dr. Johnson ftrangely afferts that Pope might have learnt the art of reasoning in verfe, exemplified in the Poem on Creation; but Ambrofe Philips related that Blackmore, as he proceeded in this poem, communicated it from time to time to a club of wits, his affociates, and that every man contributed as he could, either improvement or correction; fo that there are perhaps no where in the book thirty lines together that now ftand as they were originally written.

* Blackm. Song of Moles, p. 218.

CHAP. VI.

OF THE SEVERAL KINDS OF GENIUS'S IN THE PROFOUND, AND THE MARKS AND CHARACTERS OF EACH.

I

DOUBT not but the reader, by this Cloud of examples, begins to be convinced of the truth of our affertion, that the Bathos is an Art; and that the Genius of no mortal whatever, following the mere ideas of Nature, and unaffifted with an habitual, nay laborious peculiarity of thinking, could arrive at images fo wonderfully low and unaccountable. The great author, from whofe treasury we have drawn all these inftances (the Father of the Bathos, and indeed the Homer of it) has, like that immortal Greek, confined his labours to the greater Poetry, and thereby left room for others to acquire a due fhare of praife in inferior kinds. Many painters, who could never hit a nofe or an eye, have with felicity copied a small-pox, or been admirable at a toad or a red-herring. And feldom are we without genius's for Still-life, which they can work up and ftiffen with incredible accuracy.

An univerfal Genius rifes not in an age; but when he rifes, armies rife in him! he pours forth five or fix Epic Poems with greater facility, than five or fix pages can be produced by an elaborate and fervile copier after Nature or the Ancients. It is affirmed by Quintilian, that the fame genius which made

In a fine paffage of the tenth book: "Germanicum Auguftum ab inftitutis fludiis deflexit cura terrarum; parumque diis visum eft effe cum maximus poetarum.",