transposal

The strange transposal was, however, coupled with a condition also strange.

Their projects for the revival of their navy seldom go farther than a transposal in the stripes of the flag, and their vengeance against regal anthropophagi, and proud islanders, is infallibly diverted by a denunciation of an aristocratic quartrain, or some new mode, whose general adoption renders it suspected as the badge of a party.—If, according to Cardinal de Retz' opinion, elaborate attention to trifles denote a little mind, these are true Lilliputian sages.—Yours, &c.

Their projects for the revival of their navy seldom go farther than a transposal in the stripes of the flag, and their vengeance against regal anthropophagi, and proud islanders, is infallibly diverted by a denunciation of an aristocratic quartrain, or some new mode, whose general adoption renders it suspected as the badge of a party.—If, according to Cardinal de Retz' opinion, elaborate attention to trifles denote a little mind, these are true Lilliputian sages.—Yours, &c.

The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole.