'
I am much deceived if this be not abominable fustian." Swift, in his
"Tale of a Tub," has a ludicrous passage in this style: "Look on this
globe of earth, you will find it to be a very complete and fashionable
dress. What is that which some call _land_, but a fine coat faced with
green? or the _sea_, but a waistcoat of water-tabby? Proceed to the
particular works of creation, you will find how curious journeyman Nature
has been to trim up the vegetable _beaux_; observe how _sparkish a
periwig adorns the head of a beech_, and what a fine doublet of white
satin is worn by the birch." The fault is not in any inaptness of the
images, nor in the mere vulgarity of the things themselves, but in that
of the associations they awaken. The "prithee, undo this button" of Lear,
coming where it does and expressing what it does, is one of those touches
of the pathetically sublime, of which only Shakespeare ever knew the
secret. Herrick, too, has a charming poem on "Julia's petticoat," the
charm being that he lifts the familiar and the low to the region of
sentiment. In the passage from Sylvester, it is precisely the reverse,
and the wig takes as much from the sentiment as it adds to a Lord
Chancellor. So Pope's proverbial verse,
"True wit is Nature to advantage drest,"
unpleasantly suggests Nature under the hands of a lady's-maid.
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