and indeed, the great difficulty of sublime description. If the de-. scription be too general, and divested of circumstances, the object appears in a faint light; it makes a feeble impression, or no impression at all, on the reader. At the same time, if any trivial or improper circumstances are mingled, the whole is degraded.

2. A storm or tempest, for instance, is a sublime object in nature. But, to render it sublime in description, it is not enough, either to give us mere general expression concerning the violence of the tempest, or to describe its common vulgar effects, in overthrowing trees and houses. It must be painted with such circumstances as fill the mind with great and awful ideas.

Example. This is very happily done in the following passage:
The Father of the Gods his glory shrouds,
Involved in tempests, and a night of clouds:
And from the middle darkness flashing out,
By fits he deals his fiery bolts about.
Earth feels the motions of her angry God,
Her entrails tremble, and her mountains nod,
And flying beasts in forests seek abode.
Deep horror seizes every human breast ;
Their pride is humbled, and their fears confest;
While he from high his rolling thunder throws,
And fires the mountains with repeated blows;
The rocks are from their old foundations rent;

The winds redouble, and the rains augment *. Dryden.

Analysis. Every circumstance in this noble description is the production of an imaginaton heated and astonished with the grandeur of the object.

407. The sublime depends upon a just selection of circumstances; and great care, in writing, that every circumstance be avoided, which, bordering in the least upon the mean, or even upon the gay or the trifling, might alter the tone of the emotion.

Illus. 1. The proper sources of the sublime are to be looked for every where in nature. It is not by hunting after tropes and figures, and rhetorical assistances, that we can expect to produce it. it stands clear for the most part of these laboured refinements of art.

* Ipse Pater, mediâ nimborum in nocte, coruscâ
Fulmina molitur dextrâ ; quo maxima motu
Terra tremit; fugere fera; et mortalia corda
Per gentes humilis stravit pavor: ille flagranti
Aut Atho, aut Rodopen, aut alta Ceraunia telo
Dejicit.-
Georg. I.

No

It must come unsought, if it comes at all; and be the natural offspring of a strong imagination.

Est Deus in nobis ; agitante calescimus illo.

2. Wherever a great and awful object is presented in nature, or a very magnanimous and exalted affection of the human mind is displayed; thence, if you can catch the impression strongly, and exhibit it warm and glowing, you may draw the sublime. These are its only proper sources. In judging of any striking beauty in composition, whether it is or is not to be referred to this class, we must attend to the nature of the emotion which it raises; and only, if it be of that elevating, solemn, and awful kind, which distinguishes this feeling, we can pronounce it sublime.

Scholium. From the account which has been given of the nature of the sublime, it clearly follows, that it is an emotion which can never be long protracted. The mind, by no force of genius, can be kept, for any considerable time, so far raised above its common tone; but will, of course, relax into its ordinary situation. Neither are the abilities of any human writer sufficient to furnish a long continuation of uninterrupted sublime ideas. The utmost we can expect, is, that this fire of imagination should sometimes flash upon us like lightning from heaven, and then disappear. In Homer and Milton, this effulgence of genius breaks forth more frequently, and with greater lustre than in most authors. Shakspeare also rises often into the true sublime. But no author whatever is sublime throughout. Some, indeed, there are, who, by a strength and dignity in their conceptions, and a current of high ideas that runs through their whole composition, preserve the readers mind always in a tone nearly allied to the sublime; for which reason they may, in a limited sense, merit the name of continued sublime writers; and in this class we may justly place Demosthenes and Plato.

408. As for what is called the sublime style, it is, for the most part, a very bad one ; and has no relation whatever to the real sublime.

Illus. Persons are apt to imagine that magnificent words, accumulated epithets, and a certain swelling kind of expression, by ris ing above what is usual or vulgar, contributes to the sublime; nay, even forms this style. Nothing can be more false. In all the instances of sublime writing, which we have given, nothing of this kind appears.

Example. "God said let there be light, and there was light."

Analysis. This is striking and sublime. But put it into what is commonly called the sublime style: the sovereign Arbiter of nature, by the potent energy of a single word, commanded the light to exist;" and, as Boileau has well observed, the style indeed is raised,. but the thought is fallen.

Coral. 1. In general, in all good writing, the sublime lies in the thought, not in the words; and when the thought is truly noble, it

will for the most part, clothe itself in a native dignity of language. The sublime, indeed, rejects mean, low, or trivial expressions; but it is equally an enemy to such as are turgid. The main secret of being sublime, is to say great things in few and plain words.

2. It will be found to hold, without exception, that the most sublime authors are the simplest in their style; and wherever you find a writer, who affects a more than ordinary pomp and parade of words, and is always endeavouring to magnify his subject by epi thets, there you may immediately suspect, that feeble in sentiment, he is studying to support himself by mere expression.

409. The same unfavourable judgment we must pass on all that laboured aparatus with which some writers introduce a passage, or description, which they intend shall be sublime; calling on their readers to attend, invoking their muse, or breaking forth into general, unmeaning exclamations, concerning the greatness, terribleness, or majesty of the object, which they are to describe.

Example. Addison, in his Campaign, has fallen into an error of this kind, when about to describe the battle of Blenheim :

But my Muse! what numbers wilt thou find
To sing the furious troops in battle join'd?
Methinks, I hear the drum's tumultuous sound,

The victor's shouts, and dying groans, confound; &c. Analysis. Introductions of this kind, are a forced attempt in a writer to spur up himself, and his reader, when he finds his imagination begin to flag. It is like taking artificial spirits in order to supply the want of such as are natural. By this observation, however, it is not meant to pass a general sensure on Adison's Campaign, which, in several places, is far from wanting merit; and, in particular, the noted comparison of his hero to the angel who rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm, is a truly sublime image.

410 The faults opposite to the sublime, are chiefly two; first, the frigid; and, secondly, the bombast.

Illus. 1. The frigid consists in degrading an object, or sentiment, which is sublime in itself, by our weak conception of it; or, by our weak, low, and childish description of it. This betrays entire absence, or at least, great poverty of genius. (See Art. 204.)

2. Bombast lies in forcing an ordinary or trivial object out of its rank, and endeavouring to raise it into the sublime; or, in attempting to exalt a sublime object beyond all natural and reasonable bounds. Into this error, which is but too common, writers of geuius may sometimes fall, by unluckily losing sight of the true point of the sublime. This is also called fustain, or rant. Shakspeare, a

great but incorrect genius, is not unexceptionable here. Dryden and Lee, in their trajedies, abound with it. (See Chapter VIII. Book 111.)

CHAPTER VI.

BEAUTY, AND OTHER PLEASURES OF TASTE.

411. BEAUTY, next to sublimity, affords, beyond doubt, the highest pleasure to the imagination. The emotion which it raises, is very distinguishable from that of sublimity. It is of a calmer kind; more gentle and soothing; it does not elevate the mind so much, but produces an agreeable serenity. Sublimity raises a feeling, too violent, to be lasting? the pleasure arising from beauty admits of longer continuance. It extends also to a much greater variety of objects than sublimity; to a variety indeed so great that the feelings which beautiful objects produce, dif fer considerably, not in degree only, but also in kind from one another. Hence, no word in the language is used in a more vague signification than beauty.

Illus. It is applied to almost every external object that pleases the eye, or the ear; to a great number of the graces of writing; to many dispositions of the mind; nay, to several objects of mere abstract science. We talk currently of a beautiful tree or flower; a beautiful poem; a beautiful character; and a beautiful theorem in mathematics.

Scholia 1. Hence we may easily perceive, that, among so great a variety of objects, to find out some one quality in which they all agree, and which is the foundation of that agreeable sensation they all raise, must be a very difficult, if not, more probably a vain attempt.

2. Objects, denominated beautiful, are so different, as to please, not in virtue of any one quality common to them all, but by means of several different principles in human nature. The agreeable emotion which they all raise, is somewhat of the same nature; and, therefore has the common name of beauty given to it; but it is raised by different causes.

412. Hypotheses, however, have been framed by ingenious then, for assigning the fundamental quality

of beauty in all objects. In particular, uniformity amidst variety, has been insisted on as this fundamental quality. This accounts in a satisfactory manner, for the beauty of many figures.

Illus. But when we endeavour to apply this principle to beautiful objects of some other kind, as to colour, for instance, or motion, we shall soon find that it has no place. And even in external figured objects, it does not hold that their beauty is in proportion to their mixture of variety with uniformity; seeing many please us as highly beautiful, which have scarcely any variety; and others, which are various to a degree of intricacy.

Obs. Laying systems of this kind, therefore, aside, we propose to give an enumeration of several of those classes of objects in which beauty most remarkably appears; and to point out, as far as the limits of this work will admit, the separate principles of beauty in each of them.

413. COLOUR affords, perhaps, the simplest instance of beauty, and therefore the fittest to begin with. Here, neither variety, nor uniformity, nor any other principle, can perhaps be assigned, as the foundation of beauty.

Illus. 1. We can refer it to no other cause except the structure of the eye, which determines us to receive certain modifications of the rays of light with more pleasure than others.

And we see ac

cordingly, that, as the organ of sensation varies in different persons, they have their different favourite colours. It is probable, that association o ideas has influence, in some cases, on the pleasure which we receive from colours.

Example. Green, for instance, may appear more beautiful, by being connected in our ideas with rural prospects and scenes; white, with innocence; blue, with the serenity of the sky.

Illus. 2. Independent of associations of this kind, all that we can' farther observe concerning colours, is, that those chose for beauty are, generally, delicate, rather than glaring.

Example. Such are those paintings with which nature hath ornamented some of her works, and which art strives in vain to imitate; as the feathers of several kinds of birds, the leaves of flowers, and the fine variation of colours exhibited by the sky at the rising and setting of the sun.

Corol. These present to us the highest instances of the beauty of colouring; and have accordingly been the favourite subjects of poetical description in all countries.

414. From colour we proceed to figure, which opens to us forms of beauty more complex and diversified.