The secondary pleasures of the imagination. The several In all these instances, this secondary pleasure of scurces of these pleasures (statuary, painting, description. the imagination proceeds from that action of the and music) compared together. The final cause of our re-mind which compares the ideas arising from the ori ceiving pleasure from these several sources. Of descriptions in particular The power of words over the imagination. Why one reader is more pleased with descriptions than

by words, because most of the observations that agree with descriptions are equally applicable to painting and statuary.

Quem tu, Melpomene, semel
Nascentem placido lumine videris,

Non illum labor Isthmius

Clarabit pugilem, non equus impiger, &c
Sed quæ Tibur aquæ fertile perfluunt,

Et spissa nemorum comæ,

Fingent Æolio carmine nobilem.-HoR. 4 Od. ili. 1.
He on whose birth the lyric queen

Of numbers smil'd, shall never grace
The Isthmian gauntlet, or be seen
First in the fami'd Olympic race.
But him the streams that warbling flow
Rich Tibur's fertile meads along,

And shady groves, his hanuts shall know
The master of th' Æolian song.-ATTERBURY,
WE may observe, that any single circumstance of
what we have formerly seen often raises up a whole
scene of imagery, and awakens numberless ideas
that before slept in the imagination; such a parti
cular smell or colour is able to fill the mind, on a

Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves. The reader finds a scene drawn in stronger colours, and painted more to the life in his imagination, by the help of words, than by an actual survey of the scene which they describe. In this case, the poet seems to get the better of nature: he takes, indeed, the landscape after her, but gives it more vigorous touches, heightens its beauty, and so enlivens the whole piece, that the images which flow from the objects them selves appear weak and faint, in comparison of those that come from the expressions. The reason, probably, may be, because, in the survey of any object, we have only so much of it painted on the imagina-sudden, with the picture of the fields or gardens tion as comes in at the eye; but in its description, the poet gives us as free a view of it as he pleases, and discovers to us several parts, that either we did not attend to, or that lay out of our sight when we first beheld it. As we look on any object, our idea of it is, perhaps, made up of two or three simple ideas; but when the poet represents it, he may either give us a more complex idea of it, or only raise in us such ideas as are most apt to affect the imagination.

where we first met with it, and to bring up into view all the variety of images that once attended it. Our imagination takes the hint, and leads us unexpectedly into cities or theatres, plains or meadows. We may further observe, when the fancy thus reflects on the scenes that have passed in it formerly, those which were at first pleasant to behold appear more so upon reflection, and that the memory heightens the delightfulness of the original. A Cartesian would account for both these instances in the following manner:

The set of ideas which we received from such a prospect or garden, having entered the mind at the same time, have a set of traces, belonging to them in the brain, bordering very near upon one another; when, therefore, any one of these ideas arises in the imagination, and consequently dispatches a flow of animal spirits to its proper trace, these spirits, in the violence of their motion, run not only into the trace to which they were more particularly directed, but into several of those that lie about it. By this means, they awaken other ideas of the same set, which immediately determine a new dispatch of spirits, that in the same manner open other neighbouring traces, till at last the whole set of them is blown up, and the whole prospect or garden flourishes in the imagination. But because the pleasure we receive from these places far surmounted, and overcame the little disagreeableness we found in them, for this reason there was at first a wider passage worn in the pleasure traces, and, on the contrary, so narrow a one in those which belonged to the dis agreeable ideas, that they were quickly stopt up, and rendered incapable of receiving any animal spirits, and consequently of exciting any unpleasant ideas in the memory.

It may be here worth our while to examine how it comes to pass that several readers, who are all acquainted with the same language, and know the meaning of the words they read, should nevertheless have a different relish of the same descriptions. We find one transported with a passage, which another runs over with coldness and indifference; or finding the representation extremely natural, where another can perceive nothing of likeness and conformity. This different taste must proceed either from the perfection of imagination in one more than in another, or from the different ideas that several readers affix to the same words. For, to have a true relish and form a right judgment of a description, a man should be born with a good imagination, and must have well weighed the force and energy that lie in the several words of a language, so as to be able to distinguish which are most significant and expressive of their proper ideas, and what additional strength and beauty they are capable of receiving from conjunction with others. The fancy must be warm, to retain the print of those images it hath received from outward objects, and the judgment discerning, to know what expressions are most proper to clothe and adorn them to the best advantage. A man who is deficient in either of these respects, though he may receive the general notion of a description, can It would be in vain to inquire whether the power never see distinctly all its particular beauties; as a of imagining things strongly proceeds from any person with a weak sight may have the confused pros-greater perfection in the soul, or from any nicer pect of a place that lies before him, without entering into its several parts, or discerning the variety of its colours in their full glory and perfection.-O.

No. 417.3 SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 1712.

PAPER VII.

ON THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION.
CONTENTS.

How a whole set of ideas hang together, &c. A natural cause
⚫ assigned for it. How to perfect the imagination of a writer.
Who among the ancient poets had this faculty in its greatest
perfection. Homer excelled in imagining what is great;

Virgil in imagining what is beautiful; Ovid in imagining what is new. Our countryman, Milton, very perfect in all these three respects.

texture in the brain of one man than of another.
But this is certain, that a noble writer should be
born with this faculty in its full strength and vigour,
so as to be able to receive lively ideas from outward
objects, to retain them long, and to range them to-
gether upon occasion, in such figures and represen
tations, as are most likely to hit the fancy of the
reader. A poet should take as much pains in formk">
ing his imagination, as a philosopher in cultivating
the works of nature, and be thoroughly conversant
his understanding. He must gain a due relish of
in the various enery of a country life.

When he is stored with country images, if the would go beyond pastoral, and the lower kinds of poetry, he ought to acquaint himself with the pomp

and magnificence of courts. He should be very the imagination may be affected by what is strange. well versed in every thing that is noble and stately He describes a miracle in every story, and always in the productions of art, whether it appear in paint-gives us the sight of some new creature at the end ing or statuary; in the great works of architecture of it. His art consists chiefly in well-timing his dewhich are in their present glory, or in the ruins of scription, before the first shape is quite worn off, and those which flourished in former ages.

the new one perfectly finished; so that he everywhere entertains us with something we never saw before, and shows us monster after monster to the end of the Metamorphoses.

Such advantages as these help to open a man's thoughts, and to enlarge his imagination, and will therefore have their influence on all kinds of writing, if the author knows how to make right use of them. If I were to name a poet that is a perfect master And among those of the learned languages who excel in all these arts of working on the imagination, I in this talent, the most perfect in their several kinds think Milton may pass for one; and if his Paradise are perhaps Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. The first Lost falls short of the Eneid or Iliad in this restrikes the imagination wonderfully with what is spect, it proceeds rather from the fault of the langreat, the second with what is beautiful, and the last guage in which it is written, than from any defect with what is strange. Reading the Iliad, is like of genius in the author. So divine a poem in Entravelling through a country uninhabited, where the glish is like a stately palace built of brick, where fancy is entertained with a thousand savage pros- one may see architecture in as great a perfection as pects of vast deserts, wide uncultivated marshes, one of marble, though the materials are of a coarser huge forests, misshapen rocks and precipices. On nature. But to consider it only as it regards our the contrary, the Eneid is like a well-ordered gar-present subject; What can be conceived greater den, where it is impossible to find out any part unadorned, or to cast our eyes upon a single spot that does not produce some beautiful plant or flower. But when we are in the Metamorphoses, we are walking on enchanted ground, and see nothing but scenes of magic lying around us.

Homer is in his province, when he is describing a battle or a multitude, a hero or a god. Virgil is never better pleased than when he is in his elysium, or copying out an entertaining picture. Homer's epithets generally mark out what is great; Virgil's what is agreeable. Nothing can be more magnificent than the figure Jupiter makes in the first Iliad, nor more charming than that of Venus in the first Eneid.

He spoke, and awful bends his sable brows
Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod,
The stamp of fate, and sanction of the god :
High heav'n with trembling the dread signal took,
And all Olympus to the centre shook,-POPE.
Dixit: et avertens rosea cervice refulsit,
Ambrosiæque comæ divinum vertice odorem
Spiravere: pedes vestis defluxit ad imos,
Et vera incessu patuit dea.

VIRG. Æn. i. 406

And gave his rolling eyes a sparkling grace,
And breath'd a youthful vigour on his face.-DRYDEN.
In a word, Homer fills his readers with sublime ideas,
and, I believe, has raised the imagination of all the
good poets that have come after him. I shall only
instance Horace, who immediately takes fire at the
first hint of any passage in the Iliad or Odyssey,
and always rises above himself when he has Homer
in his view. Virgil has drawn together, into his
Eneid, all the pleasing scenes his subject is capable
of admitting, and in his Georgics has given us a
collection of the most delightful landscapes that can
be made out of fields and woods, herds of cattle, and
swarms of bees.

Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, has shown us how
SPECTATOR-Nos. 61 & 62.

than the battle of angels, the majesty of Messiah, the stature and behaviour of Satan and his peers? What more beautiful than Pandemonium, Paradise, Heaven, Angels, Adam, and Eve? What more strange than the creation of the world, the several metamorphoses of the fallen angels, and the sur prising adventures their leader meets with in his search after Paradise? No other subject could have furnished a poet with scenes so proper to strike the imagination, as no other poet could have painted those scenes in more strong and lively colours.-O

No. 418.] MONDAY, JUNE 30, 1712.

PAPER VIII.

ON THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION.
CONTENTS.

Why any thing that is unpleasant to behold pleases the imagi-
nation when well described. Why the imagination re-
ceives a more exquisite pleasure from the description of
what is great, new, or beautiful. The pleasure still height-
ened if what is described raises passion in the mind. Dis-
agreeable passions pleasing when raised by apt descriptions.
Why terror and grief are pleasing to the mind when excited
by description. A particular advantage the writers in poetry
and fiction have to please the imagination. What liberties
are allowed them.

——ferat et rubus asper amonum.-VIRG. Ecl. iii. 89. The rugged thorn shall bear the fragrant rose. THE pleasures of these secondary views of the imagination are of a wider and more universal nature than those it has when joined with sight; for not only what is great, strange, or beautiful, but any thing that is disagreeable when looked upon, pleases us in an apt description. Here, therefore, we must inquire after a new principle of pleasure, which is nothing else but the action of the mind, which compares the ideas that arise from words with the ideas that arise from the objects themselves; and why this operation of the mind is attended with so much pleasure, we have before considered. For this reason, therefore, the description of a dunghill is pleasing to the imagination, if the image be represented to our minds by suitable expressions; though, perhaps, this may be more properly called the pleasure of the understanding than of the fancy, because we are not so much delighted with the image that is contained in the description, as with the aptness of the description to excite the image.

But if the description of what is little, common, 21

or deformed, be acceptable to the imagination, the decription of what is great, surprising, or beautiful, is much more so; because here we are not only delighted with comparing the representation with the original, but are highly pleased with the original itself. Most readers, I believe, are more charmed with Milton's description of paradise, than of hell: they are both, perhaps, equally perfect in their kind; but in the one the brimstone and sulphur are not so refreshing to the imagination, as the beds of flowers and the wilderness of sweets in the other.

from the secret comparison which we make between ourselves and the person who suffers. Such representations teach us to set a just value upon our own condition, and make us prize our good fortune, which exempts us from the like calamities. This is, however, such a kind of pleasure as we are not capable of receiving, when we see a person actually lying under the tortures that we meet with in a description; because, in this case, the object presses too close upon our senses, and bears so hard upon us, that it does not give us time or leisure to reflect on ourselves. Our thoughts are so intent upon the miseries of the sufferer, that we cannot turn them upon our own happiness. Whereas, on the contrary, we consider the misfortunes we read in history or poetry, either as past or as fictitious; so that the reflection upon ourselves rises in us insensibly, and overbears the sorrow we conceive for the sufferings of the afflicted.

There is yet another circumstance which recommends a description more than all the rest; and that is, if it represents to us such objects as are apt to raise a secret ferment in the mind of the reader, and to work with violence upon his passions. For, in this case, we are at once warned and enlightened, so that the pleasure becomes more universal, and is several ways qualified to entertain us. Thus in But because the mind of man requires something painting, it is pleasant to look on the picture of any more perfect in matter than what it finds there, face where the resemblance is hit; but the pleasure and can never meet with any sight in nature which increases if it be the picture of a face that is beau- sufficiently answers its highest ideas of pleasanttiful; and is still greater, if the beauty be softened ness; or, in other words, because the imagination with an air of melancholy or sorrow. The two lead-can fancy to itself things more great, strange, or ing passions which the more serious parts of poetry beautiful, than the eye ever saw, and is still sensiendeavour to stir up in us are terror and pity. And ble of some defect in what it has seen; on this achere, by the way, one would wonder how it comes count it is the part of a poet to humour the ima to pass that such passions as are very unpleasant gination in our own notions, by mending and perat all other times, are very agreeable when excited fecting nature where he describes a reality, and by by proper descriptions. It is not strange that we adding greater beauties than are put together in should take delight in such passages as are apt to nature, where he describes a fiction. produce hope, joy, admiration, love, or the like emotions, in us, because they never rise in the mind without an inward pleasure which attends them. But how comes it to pass, that we should take delight in being terrified or dejected by a description, when we find so much uneasiness in the fear or grief which we receive from any other occasion?

If we consider, therefore, the nature of this pleasure, we shall find that it does not arise so properly from the description of what is terrible, as from the reflection we make on ourselves at the time of reading it. When we look on such hideous objects, we are not a little pleased to think we are in no danger of them. We consider them, at the same time, as dreadful and harmless; so that, the more frightful appearance they make, the greater is the pleasure we receive from the sense of our own safety. In short, we look upon the terrors of a description with the same curiosity and satisfaction that we survey a dead monster.

-They drag him from his den.

The wond'ring neighbourhood, with glad surprise,
Behold his shagged breast, his giant size,

His mouth that flames no more, and his extinguish'd eyes.
DRYDEN.

It is for the same reason taat we are delighted with
the reflecting upon dangers that are past, or in
looking on a precipice at a distance, which would
fill us with a different kind of horror if we saw it
hanging over our heads.

In the like manner, when we read of torments, wounds, deaths, and the like dismal accidents, our pleasure does not flow so properly from the grief which such melancholy descriptions give us, as

• Suave mari magno turbantibus æquora ventis, &c.-Luca.

He is not obliged to attend her in the slow advances which she makes from one season to another or to observe her conduct in the successive production of plants and flowers. He may draw into his description all the beauties of the spring and autumn, and make the whole year contribute something to render it the more agreeable. His rose-trees, woodbines, and jessamines, may flower together, and his beds be covered at the same time with lilies, violets, and amaranths. His soil is not restrained to any particular set of plants, but is proper either for oaks or myrtles, and adapts itself to the products of every climate. Oranges may grow wild in it; myrrh may be met with in every hedge; and if he thinks it proper to have a grove of spices, he can quickly command sun enough to raise it. If all this will not furnish out an agreeable scene, he can make several new species of flowers, with richer scents and higher colours than any that grow in the gardens of nature. His concerts of birds may be as full and harmonious and his woods as thick and gloomy as he pleases. He is at no more expense in a long vista than a short one, and can as easily throw his cascades from a precipice of half a mile high, as from one of twenty yards. He has his choice of the winds, and can turn the course of his rivers in all the variety of meanders that are most delightful to the reader's imagination. In a word, he has the modelling of Nature in his own hands, and may give her what charms he pleases, provided he does not reform her too much, and run into absurdities by endeavouring to excel.-O.

No. 419.1 TUESDAY, JULY 1, 1712.

PAPER IX.

ON THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION.
CONTENTS.

Of that kind of poetry which Mr. Dryden calls the fairy way
of writing." How a poet should be qualified for it. The

In this re

pleasures of the imagination, that arise from it.
pect why the moderns excel the ancients, Why the En-
glish excel the moderns. Who the best among the English.
Of emblematical persons.

——————————mentis gratissimus error.-HOR. 2 Ep. ii. 140, The sweet delusion of a raptur'd mind.

THERE is a kind of writing, wherein the poet quite loses sight of nature, and entertains his reader's imagination with the characters and actions of such persons as have many of them no existence but what he bestows on them. Such are fairies, witches, magicians, demons, and departed spirits. This Mr. Dryden calls "the fairy way of writing," which is indeed more difficult than any other that depends on the poet's fancy, because he has no pattern to follow in it, and must work altogether out of his own invention.

There is a very odd turn of thought required for this sort of writing; and it is impossible for a poet to succeed in it, who has not a particular cast of fancy, and an imagination naturally fruitful and superstitious. Besides this, he ought to be very well versed in legends and fables, antiquated romances, and the traditions of nurses and old women, that he may fall in with our natural prejudices, and humour those notions which we have imbibed in our infancy. For otherwise he will be apt to make his fairies talk like people of his own species, and not like other sets of beings, who converse with different objects, and think in a different manner from that of mankind.

Sylvis deducti caveant, me judice, fauni,
Ne velut imati triviis, ac pene forenses,
Aut nimium teneris juvenentur versibus-

HOR. Ars Poet. v. 244.

Let not the wood-horn satyr fondly sport
With am'rous verses, as if bred at court.-FRANCIS

I do not say with Mr. Bays in the Rehearsal, that
spirits must not be confined to speak sense: but it
is certain their sense ought to be a little discoloured,
that it may seem particular, and proper to the per-
son and condition of the speaker.

owes its original to the darkness and superstition of later ages, when pious frauds were made use of to amuse mankind, and frighten them into a sense of their duty. Our forefathers looked upon nature with more reverence and horror, before the world was enlightened by learning and philosophy; and loved to astonish themselves with the apprehensions of witchcraft, prodigies, charms, and enchantments. There was not a village in England that had not a ghost in it; the churchyards were all haunted; every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it; and there was scarce a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit.

Among all the poets of this kind our English are much the best, by what I have yet seen; whether it be that we abound with more stories of this nature, or that the genius of our country is fitter for this sort of poetry. For the English are naturally fanci ful, and very often disposed, by that gloominess and melancholy of temper, which is so frequent in our nation, to many wild notions and visions, to which others are not so liable.

Among the English, Shakspeare has incomparably excelled all others. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in so great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch this weak superstitious part of his reader's imagination; and made him capable of succeeding, where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his own genius. There is something so wild, and yet so solemn, in the speeches of his ghosts, fairies, witches, and the like imaginary persons, that we cannot forbear thinking them natural, though we have no rule by which to judge of them, and must confess, if there are such beings in the world, it looks highly probable they should talk and act as he has represented them.

a whole creation of the like shadowy persons in Spenser, who had an admirable talent in representations of this kind. I have discoursed of these emblematical persons in former papers, and shall therefore only mention them in this place. Thus we see how many ways poetry addresses itself to the imagination, as it has not only the whole circle, of nature for its province, but makes new worlds of its own, shows us persons who are not to be found in being, and represents even the faculties of the soul, with the several virtues and vices, in a sensible shape and character.

There is another sort of imaginary beings, that we sometimes meet with among the poets, when the author represents any passion, appetite, virtue, or vice, under a visible shape, and makes it a person or an actor in his poem. Of this nature are the deThese descriptions raise a pleasing kind of horror scriptions of Hunger and Envy in Ovid, of Fame in in the mind of the reader, and amuse his imagina-Virgil, and of Sin and Death in Milton. We find tion with the strangeness and novelty of the persons who are represented in them. They bring up into our memory the stories we have heard in our childhood, and favour those secret terrors and apprehensions to which the mind of man is naturally subject. We are pleased with surveying the different habits and behaviours of foreign countries: how much more must we be delighted and surprised when we are led, as it were, into a new creation, and see the persons and manners of another species! Men of cold fancies, and philosophical dispositions, object to this kind of poetry, that it has not probability enough to effect the imagination. But to this it may be answered, that we are sure in general, there are many intellectual beings in the world besides ourselves, and several species of spirits, who are subject to different laws and economies from those of mankind: when we see, therefore, any of these represented naturally, we cannot look upon the representation as altogether impossible, nay, many are prepossessed with such false opinions, as dispose them to believe these particular delusions; at least we have all heard so many pleasing relations in favour of them, that we do not care for seeing through the falsehood, and willingly give ourselves up to so agreeable an imposture.

The ancients have not much of this poetry among hem; for, indeed, almost the whole substance of it

I shall, in my two following papers, consider, in general, how other kinds of writing are qualified to please the imagination; with which I intend to conclude this essay.-O.

No. 420.] WEDNESDAY, JULY 2, 1712.

PAPER X.

ON THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION.
CONTENTS.

What authors please the imagination. Who have nothing to
do with tiction How history pleases the imagination. How
the authors of the new philosophy please the imagination.
The bounds and defects of the imagination. Whether these
defects are essential to the imagination.