"Fate after him below with pain did move, And victory could scarce keep pace above.
"These two lines, if he can show me any sense or thought in, or any thing but bombast and noise, he shall make me believe every word in his observations on Morocco sense.
"In the Empress of Morocco were these lines:
"I'll travel then to some remoter sphere, Till I find out new worlds, and crown you there.
"'I believe our learned author takes a sphere for a country: the sphere of Morocco; as if Morocco were the globe of earth and water; but a globe is no sphere neither, by his leave,' &c. So _sphere_ must not be sense, unless it relate to a circular motion about a globe, in which sense the astronomers use it. I would desire him to expound those lines in Granada:
"I'll to the turrets of the palace go, And add new fire to those that fight below. Thence, hero-like, with torches by my side, (Far be the omen though) my love I'll guide. No, like his better fortune I'll appear, With open arms, loose veil, and flowing hair. Just flying forward from my rowling sphere.
"I wonder, if he be so strict, how he dares make so bold with _sphere_ himself, and be so critical in other men's writings. Fortune is fancied standing on a globe, not on a _sphere_, as he told us in the first act.
"Because 'Elkanah's similes are the most unlike things to what they are compared in the world,' I'll venture to start a simile in his Annus Mirabilis: he gives this poetical description of the ship called the London:
"The goodly London in her gallant trim, The phoenix-daughter of the vanquisht old, Like a rich bride does on the ocean swim, And on her shadow rides in floating gold. Her flag aloft spread ruffling in the wind, And sanguine streamers seem'd the flood to fire: The weaver, charm'd with what his loom design'd, Goes on to sea, and knows not to retire. With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength, Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves, Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length, She seems a sea-wasp flying on the waves.
"What a wonderful pother is here, to make all these poetical beautifications of a ship! that is a _phoenix_ in the first stanza, and but a _wasp_ in the last: nay, to make his humble comparison of a _wasp_ more ridiculous, he does not say it flies upon the waves as nimbly as a wasp, or the like, but it seemed a _wasp_. But our author at the writing of this was not in his altitudes, to compare ships to floating palaces: a comparison to the purpose, was a perfection he did not arrive to till his Indian Emperor's days. But, perhaps, his similitude has more in it than we imagine; this ship had a great many guns in her, and they, put all together, made the sting in the wasp's tail; for this is all the reason I can guess, why it seem'd a _wasp_. But, because we will allow him all we can to help out, let it be a _phoenix sea-wasp_, and the rarity of such an animal may do much towards heightening the fancy.