To what lengths are we carried by the rage for systems joined with the tyranny of prejudice! We see these animals; it is agreed that God has had the power to place them where they are; yet it is not agreed that he has so placed them. The same persons who readily admit that the beavers of Canada are of Canadian origin, assert that the men must have come there in boats, and that Mexico must have been peopled by some of the descendants of Magog. As well might be said that if there be men in the moon they must have been taken thither by Astolpho on his hippogriff, when he went to fetch Roland's senses, which were corked up in a bottle. If America had been discovered in his time, and there had then been men in Europe systematic enough to have advanced, with the Jesuit Lafitau, that the Caribbees descended from the inhabitants of Caria, and the Hurons from the Jews, he would have done well to have brought back the bottle containing the wits of these reasoners, which he would doubtless have found in the moon, along with those of Angelica's lover.
The first thing done when an inhabited island is discovered in the Indian Ocean, or in the South Seas, is to inquire whence came these people? But as for the trees and the tortoises, they are, without any hesitation, pronounced to be indigenous; as if it was more difficult for Nature to make men than to make tortoises. One thing, however, which tends to countenance this system is that there is scarcely an island in the Eastern or in the Western Ocean which does not contain jugglers, quacks, knaves and fools. This, it is probable, gave rise to the opinion that these animals are of the same race with ourselves.
AMPLIFICATION.
It is pretended that amplification is a fine figure of rhetoric; perhaps, however, it would be more reasonable to call it a defect. In saying all that we should say, we do not amplify; and if after saying this we amplify, we say too much. To place a good or bad action in every light is not to amplify; but to go farther than this is to exaggerate and become wearisome.
Prizes were formerly given in colleges for amplification. This was indeed teaching the art of being diffuse. It would, perhaps, have been better to have given the fewest words, and thus teach the art of speaking with greater force and energy. But while we avoid amplification, let us beware of dryness.
I have heard professors teach that certain passages in "Virgil" are amplifications, as, for instance, the following:
Nox erat, et placidum carpebant fessa soporem
Corpora per terras, silvæque et saeva quierunt
Æquora; quum medio volvuntur sidera lapsu;
Quum tacet omnis ager, pecudes, pietaeque volucres;
Quaeque lacus late liquidos, quaeque aspera dumis
Rura tenant, somno positae sub node silenti
Lenibant curas, et corda oblita laborum:
At non infelix animi Phœnissa.
'Twas dead of night, when weary bodies close
Their eyes in balmy sleep and soft repose:
The winds no longer whisper through the woods,
Nor murmuring tides disturb the gentle floods;
The stars in silent order moved around,
And peace, with downy wings, was brooding on the ground.
The flocks and herds, and parti-colored fowl,
Which haunt the woods and swim the weedy pool.
Stretched on the quiet earth securely lay,
Forgetting the past labors of the day.
All else of Nature's common gift partake;
Unhappy Dido was alone awake.—DRYDEN.
If the long description of the reign of sleep throughout all nature did not form an admirable contrast with the cruel inquietude of Dido, these lines would be no other than a puerile amplification; it is the words At non infelix animi Phœnissa—"Unhappy Dido," etc., which give them their charm.
That beautiful ode of Sappho's which paints all the symptoms of love, and which has been happily translated into every cultivated language, would doubtless have been less touching had Sappho been speaking of any other than herself; it might then have been considered as an amplification.