that the ingenious author of the dialogue concerning the Decline of eloquence among the Romans, recommends to his orator a general acquaintance with the whole circle of the polite arts. A knowledge of this fort furnishes an author with illuftrations of the most agreable kind, and fets a glofs upon his compofitions that enlivens them with fingular grace and spirit.

WERE I to point out the beauty and efficacy of metaphorical language, by particular inftances, I fhould rather draw my examples from the moderns than the antients; the latter being scarcely, I think, so exact and delicate in this article of compofition, as the former. The great improvements, indeed, in natural knowledge which have been made in these later ages, have opened a vein of metaphor entirely unknown to the antients, and enriched the fancy of modern wits with a new stock of the most pleafing ideas: a circumstance which must give them a very confiderable advantage over the Greeks and Romans. I am fure at leaft, of all the writings with which I have been converfant, the works of Mr. Addison will afford the most abundant fupply ofthis

kind, in all its variety and perfection. Truth and beauty of imagery is, indeed, his characteristical distinction, and the principal point of eminence which raises his style above that of every author in any language that has fallen within my notice. He is every where highly figurative; yet at the fame time he is the most easy and perfpicuous writer I have ever peruíed. The reafon is, his images are always taken from the most natural and familiar appearances; as they are chofen with the utmoft delicacy and judgment. Suffer me only to mention one out of a thousand I could name, as it appears to me the finest and most expreffive that ever language conveyed. It is in one of his inimitable papers upon Paradise loft, where he is taking notice of thofe changes in nature, which the author of that truly divine poem defcribes as immediately fucceeding the fall, Among other prodigies, Milton represents the fun in an eclipse; and at the fame time a bright cloud in the western regions of the heavens defcending with a band of angels. Mr. Addison, in order to fhew his author's art and judgment in the conduct and disposition of this sub

lime scenery, obferves, "the whole theatre "of nature is darkened, that this glorious "machine may appear in all its luftre and magnificence." I know not, Orontes, whether you will agree in fentiment with me; but I muft confefs I am at a lofs which to admire most upon this occafion, the poet or the critic.

THERE is a double beauty in images of this kind when they are not only metaphors, but allufions. I was much pleased with an inftance of this uncommon fpecies, in a lit⚫tle poem entitled The Spleen. The author of that piece (who has thrown together more original thoughts than I ever red in the fame compass of lines) speaking of the advantages of exercise in diffipating those gloomy vapors, which are so apt to hang upon fome minds, employs the following image:

Throw but a flone, the giant dies. You will obferve, that the metaphor here is conceived with great propriety of thought, if we confider it only in its primary view but when we fee it pointing ftill farther, and hinting at the story of

David and Goliath, it receives a very confiderable improvement from this double application.

It must be owned fome of the greatest authors, both antient and modern, have made many remarkable flips in the management of this figure; and have fometimes expreffed themselves with as much impropriety as an honeft failor of my acquaintance, a captain of a privateer, who wrote an account to his owners of an engagement, "in which he had the good fortune, " he told them, of having only one of his "bands fhot thro the nofe." The great caution therefore should be, never to join any idea to a figurativé expreffion, which would not be applicable to it in a literal fenfe. Thus Cicero, in his treatise De claris oratoribus, fpeaking of the family of the Scipios, is guilty of an impropriety of this kind :· O generofam ftirpem (says he)et tanquam in unam arborem plura genera, fic in iftam domum multorum infitam atque illuminatam fapientiam. Mr. Addison, likewise, has

fallen

a The celebrated Menage has offered a conjecture, which he thinks will intirely remove the charge brought against Cicero from this paffage. He fuppofes that illuminatam may be taken in the fame fenfe as inocu

fallen into an error of the fame fort, where he obferves, "there is not a single view of "human nature, which is not fufficient to

extinguish the feeds of pride." In this paffage he evidently unites images together, which have no connection with each other. When a feed has loft its power of vegetation, I might in a metaphorical fense say it is extinguished: but when in the fame sense I call that difpofition of the heart which produces pride, the feed of that paffion, I cannot, without introducing a confusion of ideas, apply any word to feed, but what correfponds

latam; Cicero having in another part of his writings ufed the word lumina in the fignification of oculi: "Democritus luminibus amiffis." Tufcul. v. vid. Menagiana, tom. iii. p. 46. That lumina is fometimes ufed by Cicero, and other writers of equal authority, in the fignification of oculi, is most certain: but whenever it is fo ufed, it must always be by metonymy. Now a word which operates by the force of that figure, can never, without occafioning the utmost confufion of images, be converted into a metaphor derived from the proper term for which the metonymy is fubftituted: because the moment it drops its metonymical office, it reverts to its primary employment, and confequently introduces an idea utterly different from that which it raifed in its figurative ftate. It is not probable therefore that illuminatam, in the fenfe for which Menage contends, could have been authorized by common ufe; as it would be impossible, perhaps, to produce a metaphorical term of

general