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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. Persons are apt to imagine, that magnificent words, accumulated epithets, and a certain swelling kind of expression, by rising above what is usual or vulgar, contributes to, or even forms, the sublime. Nothing can be more false. In all the instances of sublime writing which I have given, nothing of this kind appears. "God said, Let there be "light; and there was light." 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

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word, commanded the light to exist;" and, as Boileau has well observed, the style indeed is raised, but the thought is fallen. 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. It will be found to hold without exception, that the most sublime authors are the simplest in their style; and whereever you find a writer, who affects a more than ordinary pomp and parade of words, and is always endeavouring to magnify his subject by epithets, there you may immediately suspect, that,

feeble in sentiment, he is studying to support himself by mere expression.

The same unfavourable judgment we must pass on all that laboured apparatus 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 exclama'tions, concerning the greatness, terribleness, or majesty of the object which they are to describe. Mr Addison, in his Campaign, has fallen into an error of this kind, when about to describe the battle of Blenheim.

But O! 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.

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, I do not mean to pass a general censure on Mr Addison'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.

The faults opposite to the sublime are chiefly two; the frigid and the bombast. The frigid consists in degrading an object, or sentiment, which is sublime in itself, by our mean conception of it; or by our weak, low, and childish description of it. This betrays entire absence, or at least great poverty of genius. Of this there are abundance of examples, and these commented upon with much humour, in the Treatise on the Art of Sinking, in Dean Swift's works; the instances taken chiefly from Sir Richard Blackmore. One of these I had occasion already to give, in relation to Mount Etna, and it were needless to produce any more. The 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 genius may sometimes fall, by unluckily losing sight of the true point of the sublime. This is also called fustian, or rant. Shakespeare, a great but incorrect genius, is not unexceptionable here. Dryden and Lee, in their tragedies, abound with it.

Thus far of the sublime; of which I have treated fully, because it is so capital an excellency in fine writing, and because clear and precise ideas on this head are, as far as I know, not to be met with in critical writers.

Before I conclude this Lecture, there is one observation which I choose to make at this time; I shall make it once for all, and hope it will be afterwards remembered. It is with respect to the instances of faults, or rather blemishes and imperfections, which, as I have done in this Lecture, I shall hereafter continue to take, when I can, from writers of reputation. I have not the least intention thereby to disparage their character in the general. I shall have other occasions of doing equal justice to their beauties. But it is no reflection on any human performance, that it is not absolutely perfect. The task would be much easier for me, to collect instances of faults from bad writers. But they would draw no attention, when quoted from books which nobody reads. And I conceive that the method which I follow will contribute more to make the best authors be read with pleasure, when one properly distinguishes their beauties from their faults, and is led to imitate and admire only what is worthy of imitation and admiration.

LECTURE V.

BEAUTY, AND OTHER PLEASURES of taste.

As sublimity constitutes a particular character of composition, and forms one of the highest excellencies of eloquence and of poetry, it was proper to treat of it at some length. It will not be necessary to discuss so particularly all the other pleasures that arise from taste, as some of them have less relation to our main subject. On beauty only I shall make several observations, both as the subject is curious, and as it tends to improve taste, and to discover the foundation of several of the graces of description and of poetry.*

Beauty, next to sublimity, affords, beyond doubt, the highest pleasure to the imagination.

* See Hutchinson's Inquiry concerning Beauty and Virtue. -Gerard on Taste, chap. iii.-Inquiry into the Origin of the Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.-Elements of Criticism, chap. iii.-Spectator, vol. vi.-Essay on the Pleasures of Taste.

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