ularizing of to-day and to-morrow is infinitely more expres-
sive of transitoriness than any description wherein the terms
are general that can be substituted in its room.

Yet to a cold annotator, a man of mere intellection with-
out fancy, the latter exhibition of the sentiment would ap-
pear the more emphatical of the two. Nor would he want
some show of reason for this preference. As a specimen,
therefore, of a certain mode of criticising, not rarely to be
met with, in which there is I know not what semblance of
judgment without one particle of taste, I shall suppose a
critic of this stamp entering on the comparison of the prece-
ding quotation and the paraphrase. "In the one," he would
argue, "the beauty of only one sort of flowers is exalted
above the effects of human industry, in the other the beauty
of the whole kind. In the former, one individual monarch is
said not to have equalled them in splendour, in the latter it is
affirmed that no monarch whatever can equal them." How-
ever specious this way of reasoning may be, we are certain
that it is not solid, because it doth not correspond with the
principles of our nature. Indeed, what was explained above*
in regard to abstraction, and the particularity of our ideas,
properly so called, may serve, in a great measure, to account
for the effect which speciality hath upon the imagination.
Philosophy, which, strictly considered, addresseth only the
understanding, and is conversant about abstract truth, abounds
in general terms, because these alone are adequate to the
subject treated. On the contrary, when the address is made
by eloquence to the fancy, which requires a lively exhibition
of the object presented to it, those terms must be culled that
are as particular as possible, because it is solely by these that
the object can be depicted. And even the most rigid philos
opher, if he choose that his disquisitions be not only under-
stood, but relished (and without being relished they are un-
derstood to little purpose), will not disdain sometimes to ap-
ply to the imagination of his disciples, mixing the pleasant
with the useful. This is one way of sacrificing to the Graces.

But I proceed to give examples in such of the different
arts of speech as are most susceptible of this beauty. The
first shall be in the verbs.

"It seem'd as there the British Neptune stood,
With all his hosts of waters at command;
Beneath them to submit th' officious flood;
And with his trident shoved them off the sand.†

The words submit and shoved are particularly expressive of
the action here ascribed to Neptune. The former of these
verbs, submit, may indeed be called a Latinism in the signifi-
cation it hath in this passage. But such idioms, though im-

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