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PATRONAGE. But it generally happened that they were here left to their destiny, for the inner doors were committed to CAPRICE, who opened and shut them, as it seemed, by chance, and rejected or admitted without any settled rule of distinction. In the mean time, the miserable attendants were left to wear out their lives in alternate exultation and dejection, delivered up to the sport of SUSPICION, who was always whispering into their ear designs against them which were never formed, and of Envy, who diligently pointed out the good fortune of one or other of their competitors. INFAMY flew round the hall, and scattered mildews from her wings, with which every one was stained; REPUTATION followed her with slower flight, and endeavoured to hide the blemishes with paint, which was immediately brushed away, or separated of itself, and left the stains more visible; nor were the spots of INFAMY ever effaced, but with limpid water effused by the hand of TIME from a well which sprung up beneath the throne of TRUTH.

It frequently happened that SCIENCE, unwilling to lose the ancient prerogative of recommending to PATRONAGE, Would lead her followers into the Hall of Expectation; but they were soon discouraged from attending, for not only ENVY and SUSPICION incessantly tormented them, but IMPUDENCE considered them as intruders, and incited INFAMY to blacken them. They therefore quickly retired, but seldom without some spots which they could scarcely wash away, and which shewed that they had once waited in the Hall of Expectation.

The rest continued to expect the happy moment, at which CAPRICE should beckon them to approach; and endeavoured to propitiate her, not with Homerical harmony, the representation of great actions, or the recital of noble sentiments, but with soft and voluptuous melody, intermingled with the praises of PATRONAGE and PRIDE, by whom they were heard at once with pleasure and contempt.

Some were indeed admitted by CAPRICE, when they least expected it, and heaped by PATRONAGE with the gifts of FORTUNE, but they were from that time chained to her footstool, and condemned to regulate their lives by her glances and her nods: they seemed proud of their manacles, and seldom complained of any drudgery, however servile, or any affront, however contemptuous; yet they were often, notwithstanding their obedience, seized on a sudden by CAPRICE, divested of their ornaments, and thrust back into the Hall of Expectation.

Here they mingled again with the tumult, and all, except a few whom experience had taught to seek happiness in the regions of liberty, continued to spend hours, and days, and years, courting the smile of CAPRICE by the arts of FLATTERY; till at length new crowds pressed in upon them, and drove them forth at different outlets into the habitations of DISEASE, and SHAME, and POVERTY, and Despair, where they passed the rest of their lives in narratives of promises and breaches of faith, of joys and sorrows, of hopes and disappointments.

The SCIENCES, after a thousand indignities, retired from the palace of PATRONAGE, and having long wandered over the world in grief and distress,

were led at last to the cottage of Independence, the daughter of FORTITUDE; where they were taught by PRUDENCE and PARSIMONY to support themselves in dignity and quiet.

NUMB. 92. SATURDAY, February 2, 1751.

IT

Jam nunc minaci murmure cornuum
Perstringis aures, jam litui strepunt.

Lo! now the clarion's voice I hear,

Its threat'ning murmurs pierce mine ear,

And in thy lines with brazen breath

The trumpet sounds the charge of death.

HOR.

FRANCIS.

T has been long observed, that the idea of beauty is vague and undefined, different in different minds, and diversified by time or place. It has been a term hitherto used to signify that which pleases us we know not why, and in our approbation of which we can justify ourselves only by the concurrence of numbers, without much power of enforcing our opinion upon others by any argument, but example and authority. It is, indeed, so little subject to the examinations of reason, that Paschal supposes it to end where demonstration begins, and maintains, that without incongruity and absurdity we cannot speak of geometrical beauty.

To trace all the sources of that various pleasure which we ascribe to the agency of beauty, or to dis

entangle all the perceptions involved in its idea, would, perhaps, require a very great part of the life of Aristotle or Plato. It is, however, in many cases apparent, that this quality is merely relative and comparative; that we pronounce things beautiful because they have something which we agree, for whatever reason, to call beauty, in a greater degree than we have been accustomed to find it in other things of the same kind; and that we transfer the epithet as our knowledge increases, and appropriate it to higher excellence, when higher excellence comes within our view.

Much of the beauty of writing is of this kind; and therefore Boileau justly remarks, that the books which have stood the test of time, and been admired through all the changes which the mind of man has suffered from the various revolutions of knowledge, and the prevalence of contrary customs, have a better claim to our regard than any modern can boast, because the long continuance of their reputation proves that they are adequate to our faculties, and agreeable to nature.

It is, however, the task of criticism to establish principles; to improve opinion into knowledge; and to distinguish those means of pleasing which depend upon known causes and rational deduction, from the nameless and inexplicable elegancies which appeal wholly to the fancy, from which we feel delight, but know not how they produce it, and which may well be termed the enchantresses of the soul. Criticism reduces those regions of literature under the dominion of science, which have hitherto

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known only the anarchy of ignorance, the caprices of fancy, and the tyranny of prescription.

There is nothing in the art of versifying so much exposed to the power of imagination as the accommodation of the sound to the sense, or the representation of particular images, by the flow of the verse in which they are expressed. Every student has innumerable passages, in which he, and perhaps he alone, discovers such resemblances; and since the attention of the present race of poetical readers seems particularly turned upon this species of elegance, I shall endeavour to examine how much these conformities have been observed by the poets, or directed by the criticks, how far they can be established upon nature and reason, and on what occasions they have been practised by Milton.

Homer, the father of all poetical beauty, has been particularly celebrated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as he that, of all the poets, exhibited the greatest variety of sound; for there are, says he, innumerable passages, in which length of time, bulk of body, extremity of passion, and stillness of repose; or, in which, on the contrary, brevity, speed, and eagerness, are evidently marked out by the sound of the syllables. Thus the anguish and slow pace with which the blind Polypheme groped out with his hands the entrance of his cave, are perceived in the cadence of the verses which describe it.

Κύκλωψ δὲ ςενάχων τε καὶ ὠδίνων ὀδύνησι,
Χερσὶ ψηλοφόων

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