Address to the Angler to spare the young fish
If yet too young, and easily deceived,
A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod,
Him, piteous of his youth, and the short space
He has enjoy'd the vital light of heaven,
Soft disengage, and back into the stream
The speckled infant throw.——
Scott
The praise bestowed on a preceding passage, cannot be justly given to this. There is in it an attempt at dignity above the occasion. Pathos seems to have been intended, but affectation only is produced.
Ritson
It is not affectation, but it is the mock heroic of pathos, introduced purposely and wisely to attract the reader to a proposal, which from the unimportance of the subject—a poor little fish—might else have escaped his attention—as children learn, or may learn, humanity to animals from the mock romantic "Perambulations of a Mouse."
HAYMAKING
——Infant hands
Trail the long rake; or, with the fragrant load
O'er-charged, amid the kind oppression roll.
Scott
"Kind oppression" is a phrase of that sort, which one scarcely knows whether to blame or praise: it consists of two words, directly opposite in their signification; and yet, perhaps, no phrase whatever could have better conveyed the idea of an easy uninjurious weight—