her nods; they feemed proud of their manacles, and feldom complained of any drudgery, however fervile, or any affront, however contemptuous: yet they were often, notwithstanding their obedience, feized on a fudden 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 feek happiness in the regions of Liberty, continued to spend hours, and days, and years, in courting the fmile of CAPRICE with the arts of FLATTERY; till at length new crouds preffed in upon them, and drove them forth at different outlets into the habitations of DISEASE, and SHAME, and POVERTY, and DESPAIR, where they paffed the rest of their lives in narratives of promises and breaches of faith, joys and forrows, hopes and disappoint

ments.

The SCIENCES, after a thousand indignities, at laft retired from the palace of PATRONAGE; and having long wandered over the world in grief and diftrefs, were led at last to the cottage of INDE PENDANCE, the daughter of FORTITUDE, where they were taught by PRUDENCE and PARSIMONY to fupport themselves in dignity and quiet.

THE

RAMBLER.

NUMBER XCII.

LONDON, Saturday, February 2. 1751.

I

Jam nunc minaci murmure cornuum.
Perftringis aures, jam litui ftrepunt.

HOR.

T has been long obferved, that the idea of beauty is vague and undefined, different in different minds, and diverfified by time or place. It has been indeed a term hitherto used to fignify, that which pleases us we know not why; and in VOL. IV.

Qur

our approbation of which we can for the most part only justify ourselves by the concurrence of numbers, without much power of enforcing our opinion upon others by any argument, but example and authority. It is indeed fo little fubject to the examinations of reason, that Paschal fuppofed it to end where demonftration begins; and maintains, that, without incongruity and abfurdity, we cannot fpeak of geometrical beauty.

To trace all the fources of that various pleasure which we afcribe to the agency of beauty, or to difentangle all the perceptions involved in its idea, would perhaps require a very great part of the life of an Ariftotle or Plato. It is however, in many cafes, apparent, that this quality is relative and comparative; that we pronounce things beautiful, because they have something which we have agreed, for whatever reason, to call beauty, in a greater degree than we have been accustomed to find in other things of the fame 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 juftly remarks, that the works which have stood the test of time, and been admired through all the changes which the mind of man has fuffered from the various revolutions of knowJedge, 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 exalt opinion to knowledge, and to diftinguish between thofe means of pleasing which depend upon known caufes and rational deduction, from the nameless and inexplicable elegancies which appeal wholly to the fancy, of which we only feel that they delight, and which may well be termed the enchantreffes of the foul; and to reduce thofe regions of literature under the dominion of Science, which have hitherto known only the anarchy of Ignorance, the caprices of Fancy, and tyranny of Prescription.

There is nothing in the art of verfifying so much exposed to the power of Imagination, as the accommodation of the found to the fenfe, or the representation of particular images, by the flow of the verfe in which they are expreffed. Every reader has innumerable paffages, in which he, and perhaps he alone, discovers fuch refemblances. And fince the attention of the prefent race of poetical readers feems particularly turned upon this fpecies of elegance, I fhall endeavour to examine, how much this conformity has been obferved by the poets, or directed by the critics; how far it can be established upon nature and reason; and on what occafions it has been practifed by Milton.

Homer, the father of all poetical beauty, has been particularly celebrated by Dionyfius, as he that, of all the poets, had the greatest variety of found: for there are (fays he) innumerable paffages, in which length of time, bulk of body, extremity of paffion, and Stillness of repofe; or in which, on the contrary, brevity, Speed, and eagerness, are evidently marked out by the found of the fyllables. Thus the anguish and Почта

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