and his wraths, and his cholers, and his moods, and his displeasures, and his indignations; and also being a little intoxicates in his prains, did, in his ales and his angers, look you, kill his pest friend Clytus.

Gower. Our King is not like him in that; he never kill'd any of his friends.

Fluellen. It is not well done, mark you now, to take the tales out of my mouth, ere it is made and finished. I speak but in figures, and comparisons of it: As Alexander kill'd his friend Clytus, being in his ales and his cups; so also Harry Monmouth, being in his right wits and his good judgments, turn'd away the fat knight with the great belly doublet; he was full of jefts, and gypes, and knaveries, and mocks: I have forgot his

name.

Gower Sir John Falstaff.

Fluellen. That is he: 1 tell you there is good men porn at Monmouth.

K. Henry V. a& 4. fc. 13.

Instruction, no doubt, is the chief end of comparison; but that it is not the only end will be evident from confidering, that a comparison may be employed with fuccefs to put a subject in a strong point of view. A lively idea is formed of a man's courage, by likening it to that of a lion; and eloquence is exalted in our imagination, by comparing it to a river overflowing its banks, and involving all in its impetuous course. The fame effect is produced by < contraft a man in profperity becomes more fenfible of his happiness by opposing his condi

• tion

tion to that of a perfon in want of bread. Thus, comparison is fubfervient to poetry as well as to philofophy: and, with respect to both, the foregoing obfervation holds equally, that resemblance among objects of the fame kind, and dif fimilitude among objects of different kinds, have no effect: fuch a comparison neither tends to gratify our curiofity, nor to fet the objects compared in a stronger light: two apartments in a palace, fimilar in fhape, fize, and furniture, make separately as good a figure as when compared; and the fame obfervation is applicable to two fimilar copartments in a garden on the other hand, oppose a regular building to a fall of water, or a good picture to a towering hill, or even a little dog to a large horse, and the contraft will produce no effect. But a refemblance between objects of different kinds, and a difference between objects of the fame kind, have remarkably an enlivening effect. The poets, fuch of them as have a just taste, draw all their fimiles from things that in the main differ widely from the principal fubject; and they never attempt a contraft but where the things have a common genus and a refemblance in the capital circumftances: place together a large and a small fized animal of the fame fpecies, the one will appear greater, the other lefs, than when viewed separately when we oppose beauty to deformity, each makes a greater figure by the comparison. We compare the dress of different

nations

1

nations with curiosity, but without furprise; because they have no fuch resemblance in the capital parts as to please us by contrasting the smaller parts. But a new cut of a sleeve or of a pocket enchants by its novelty, and in oppofition to the former fashion raises fome degree of surprise.

That refemblance and diffimilitude have an enlivening effect upon objects of fight, is made fufficiently evident and that they have the fame effect upon objects of the other fenfes, is also certain. Nor is that law confined to the external fenses; for characters contrafted make a greater figure by the oppofition: Iago, in the tragedy of Othello, fays,

He hath a daily beauty in his life

That makes me ugly.

The character of a fop, and of a rough warrior, are no where more fuccefsfully contrafted than in Shakespear:

Hotfpur, My liege, I did deny no prifoners;
But I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage, and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my fword;
Came there a certain Lord, neat, trimly drefs'd,
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin, new-reap'd,
Shew'd like a stubble-land at harvest-home.
He was perfumed like a milliner;

And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held

A

A pouncet-box, which ever and anon

He gave his nofe;-and still he fmil'd, and talk'd;
And as the foldiers bare dead bodies by,
He call'd them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a flovenly unhandsome corfe!
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

With many holiday and lady terms

He queftion'd me: among the rest, demanded
My pris'ners, in your Majesty's behalf.

I then all smarting with my wounds; being gall'd
To be so pefter'd with a popinjay,

Out of my grief, and my impatience,

Answer'd, neglectingly, I know not what:

He fhould, or fhould not; for he made me mad,

To see him shine so brisk, and smell fo sweet,

And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman,

Of guns, and drums, and wounds; (God fave the

mark!)

And telling me, the fov'reigneft thing on earth

Was parmacity, for an inward bruise;

And that it was great pity, so it was,

This villainous faltpetre should be digg'd
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good, tall fellow had destroy'd
So cowardly and but for thefe vile guns
He would himself have been a foldier.-

First part, Henry IV. a&t. 1. fc. 4.

Paffions and emotions are also inflamed by comparison. A man of high rank humbles the bystanders, even to annihilate them in their own opinion: Cæfar, beholding the ftatue of Alexander, was greatly mortified, that now at the age of thir

ty-two

ty-two when Alexander died, he had not performed one memorable action.

Our opinions also are much influenced by comparison. A man whofe opulence exceeds the ordinary standard, is reputed richer than he is in reality; and wisdom or weakness, if at all remarkable in an individual, is generally carried beyond the truth.

The opinion a man forms of his prefent distress is heightened by contrasting it with his former happiness:

Could I forget

What I have been, I might the better bear

What I am deftin'd to. I'm not the first

That have been wretched: but to think how much I have been happier.

Southern's Innocent Adultery, a& 2.

The distress of a long journey makes even an indifferent inn agreeable: and in travelling, when the road is good, and the horseman well covered, a bad day may be agreeable by making him fenfible how fnug he is.

The fame effect is equally remarkable, when a man opposes his condition to that of others. A fhip toffed about in a storm, makes the fpectator reflect upon his own ease and security, and puts these in the strongest light:

Suave, mari magno turbantibus æquora ventis,
E terra magnum alterius fpectare laborem;

Non