softness and smoothness, would then be united.

I may here observe, that as softness is become a visible quality as well as smoothness, so also, from the same kind of sympathy, it is a principle of beauty in many visible objects: but as the hardest bodies are those which receive the highest polish, and consequently the highest degree of smoothness, there must be a number of objects in which smoothness and softness are for that reason incompatible. The one however is not unfrequently mistaken for the other, and I have more than once heard pictures, which were so smoothly finished that they looked like ivory, commended for their softness.

The skin of a delicate woman, is an example of softness and smoothness united; but if by art a higher polish be given to the skin, the softness, and in that case I may add the beauty, is destroyed. Fur, moss, hair, wool, &c. are comparatively rough; but they are soft, and yield to pressure, and therefore take off from the appear

ance of hardness, and also of edginess. A stone or rock, when polished by water, is smoother, but less soft than when covered with moss; and upon this principle, the wooded banks of a river have often a softer general effect, than the bare, shaven border of a canal. There is the same difference between the grass of a pleasureground mowed to the quick, and that of a fresh meadow; and it frequently happens, that continual mowing destroys the verdure, as well as the softness. So much does excessive attachment to one principle destroy its own ends.

Before I end this chapter, I wish to say a few words with respect to my adoption of Mr. Burke's doctrine. It has been asserted, that I have pre-supposed our ideas of the sublime and beautiful to be clearly settled*; whereas the least attention to what I have written, would have shewn the contrary. As far as my own opinion is concerned, I certainly am convinced of

* Essay on Design in Gardening, by Mr. George Mason, page 201.

the general truth and accuracy of Mr. Burke's system, for it is the foundation of my own; but I must be very ignorant of human nature, to suppose "our ideas clearly settled" on any question of that kind. I therefore have always spoken cautiously, and even doubtingly, to avoid the imputation of judging for others; I have said—if we agree with Mr. Burke→ according to Mr. Burke,-and in the next chapter to this, I have stated that Mr. Burke has done a great deal towards settling the vague and contradictory ideas, &c. These passages so very plainly shew how little I presumed to suppose our ideas were clearly settled, that no person, who had read the book with any degree of attention, could have made such a remark; and I must say, that whoever does venture to criticize what he has not considered, is much more his own enemy, than the author's.

By way of convincing his readers that Mr. Burke's ideas of the sublime are un

worthy of being attended to, Mr. G. Ma

son has the following remark, which I have taken care to copy very exactly; "The majority of thinking and learned men, whom it has been my lot to converse with on such subjects, are as well persuaded of terror's being the cause of sublime, as that Tenterden steeple is of Goodwin sands." As Mr. Mason seems very conversant with the classics, as well as with English authors, and as the sublime in poetry has been discussed by writers of high authority, and the sublimity of many passages very generally acknowledged, I could wish that he and his learned friends, would take the trouble of examining such passages in Homer, Virgil, Shakspeare, Milton, and all the poets who are most eminent for their sublimity: and should they find, as surely they will, that almost all of them are founded upon terror, or on those modifications of it which Mr. Burke has so admirably pointed out, they may perhaps be inclined to speak somewhat less contemptuously of his researches. They may even be led to reflect, what must have been

the depth and penetration of that man's mind, who, scarcely arrived at manhood, clearly saw how one great principle, an acknowledged cause of the sublime in poetry, was likewise the most powerful cause of sublimity in all objects whatsoever; pursued it through all the works of art, and of nature; and explained, illustrated and adorned his discovery, with that ingenuity, and that brilliancy of language, in which he stands unrivalled.

A number of sublime passages in poetry will of course present themselves to a person so well read in the classics as Mr. Mason, but I will beg leave to remind him, and those who reject Mr. Burke's doctrine, of a few instances, in which if terror be not the cause of the sublime, I have no idea of any cause of any effect. It is natural to begin by the great father of all poetry, and by a passage which Longinus has particularly dwelt upon: it is that celebrated one in the Iliad*, where Homer has described Jupi

Hliad, B. xx. L. 56.