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CHAP.

III.

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ment.

fear; his friendship gives, but never seeks pro-
tection; his love imparts favour, which it scorns
to ask; and his grief assumes the character of
rage, and expends itself in menaces and vows
of vengeance against those who have caused it.
By an artful concatenation of circumstances,
'seemingly accidental, he is shown to the reader
under the influence of every passion by turns,
all of which operate to the same end, and con-
spire to swell his rage, rendered doubly dread-
ful by despair and impending death. In this
temper of mind, endowed with more than mor-
tal strength, and clad in celestial armour, he is
shown advancing to the fight, like the autumnal
star, whose approach taints the air, and diffuses
disease, pestilence, and death. Such an image
prepares the mind for the events that follow,
which thence seem natural consequences, in-
stead of extravagant fictions *.

29. To describe such a character as this, or indeed any other, requires neither feeling nor talents but to delineate or represent it-to exhibit it speaking and acting under the influence of all the variety of passions, to which it is liable-requires the utmost perfection of both; and the more highly the picture is finished, the greater is the difficulty and the greater the merit for it is in the little expressions of

αριέται των ὑπερβολων αἱ αυτο τοτο διαλανθανεσαι, ὅτι εἰσιν wego.-LONGIN. f. Xxxviii.

nature, and circumstances of truth, that the mind discovers and feels the resemblance between fiction and reality; and thence gives credit to the former, when it embellishes and exaggerates. Truth is naturally circumstantial, especially in matters that interest the feelings; for that, which has been strongly impressed upon the mind, naturally leaves precise and determinate ideas: whence a narration is always rendered more credible by being minutely detailed; provided the minute particulars are such as really do happen in similar transactions, with which we are acquainted. That which is demonstrably false can never, by any means, acquire even the semblance of truth; but that, which we judge to be false only by analogy and general experience, may acquire such semblance, by being connected with circumstances, which, demonstration or experience tell us, are true; or by arising out of events, which analogy tells us, may be true; and the more of these real circumstances, and probable events are connected with it, the more credible will it seem.

30. Hence we may account for the extreme exactitude, with which, that supreme master of fiction, the author of the Iliad, has described every thing, in which error or inaccuracy might be detected, either by experience, or demonstration. The structure of the human body; the effects of wounds; the symptoms of death;

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CHAP.

III.

Of Judgment.

the actions and manners of wild beasts; the relative situations of cities and countries; and the influence of winds and tempests upon the waters of the sea, are all described with a precision, which, not only no other poet, but scarcely any technical writer upon the respective subjects of anatomy, hunting, geography and navigation has ever attained. The hyperboles are all in the actions of his gods and heroes; in which, exaggeration could not be detected: but in every object and every circumstance, which it was possible for his audience practically to know, the most scrupulous exactness, in every minute particular, is religiously observed. There are near twenty descriptions. of the various effects of wind upon water-all different, and all without one fictitious or exaggerated circumstance-no fluctus ad sidera tollit; or imo consurgit ad æthera fundo, which even Virgil, the most modest of his imitators, has not avoided, but the common occurrences of nature, raised into sublimity by being selected with taste, and expressed with energy.

31. The untutored, but uncorrupted feelings of all unpolished nations have regulated their fictions upon the same principles, even when most rudely exhibited. In relating the actions of their gods and deceased heroes, they are licentiously extravagant: for there falsehood

could amuse, because it could not be detected: but in describing the common appearances of nature; and all those objects and effects, which are exposed to habitual observation, their bards are scrupulously exact; so that an extravagant hyperbole, in a matter of this kind, is sufficient to mark as counterfeit any composition attributed to them. In the early stages of society, men are as acute and accurate in practical observation, as they are limited and deficient in speculative science; and in proportion as they are ready to give up their imaginations to delusion, they are jealously tenacious of the evidence of their senses. James Macpherson, in the person of his blind bard, could say with applause, in the eighteenth century, "Thus "have I seen in Cona; but Cona I behold no

more-thus have I seen two dark hills re"moved from their place by the strength of the "mountain stream. They turn from side to

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side, and their tall oaks meet one another

on high. Then they fall together with all "their rocks and trees." But had a blind bard, or any other bard, presumed to utter such a rhapsody of bombast in the hall of shells, amid the savage warriors, to whom Ossian is supposed to have sung, he would have needed all the influence of royal birth, attributed to that fabulous personage, to restrain the audience from throwing their shells at his head, and

CHAP.

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СНАР.

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hooting him out of their company as an inpudent liar. They must have been sufficiently acquainted with the rivulets of Cona or GlenCoe to know that he had seen nothing of the kind, and have known enough of mountain torrents in general to know that no such effects are ever produced by them; and would, therefore, have indignantly rejected such a barefaced attempt to impose on their credulity. In all the numerous descriptions of the kind, which abound as illustrations in the Iliad, the fire of the poet never leads him to transgress the most rigid bounds of truth; nor is a single circumstance ever introduced, which the most scrupulous naturalist would not allow to be probable and consistent: for, in these objects of common observation, his audience were the most scrupulous of all naturalists; who were only to be satisfied, in poetry, with the same fidelity of imitation, as the Turkish emperor required in painting upon exactly the same principle.

32. In the Odyssey there is generally less detail, as well as less variety and brilliancy of imagery; but the attention to truth, in all circumstances of common observation, is so far the same, that we might securely pronounce the passage, in which the notes of the nightingale are treated as notes of sorrow, to be the pro

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