either highly transport us, or if unsuccessful in the execution, leave us greatly disgusted, and displeased. We attempt to rise along with the writer; the imagination is awakened, and put upon the stretch; but it requires to be supported; and if, in the midst of its efforts, you desert it unexpectedly, down it comes, with a painful shock. When Milton, in his battle of the angels, describes them as tearing up the mountains, and throwing them at one another; there are, in his description, as Mr. Addison has observed, no circumstances, but what are properly Sublime:

From their foundations loos'ning to and fro,

They pluck the seated hills, with all their load,
Rocks, waters, woods; and by the shaggy tops
Uplifting, bore them in their hands.

Whereas Claudian, in a fragment of the wars of the giants, has contrived to render this idea of their throwing the mountains, which is in itself so grand, burlesque and ridiculous; by this single circumstance, of one of his giants with the mountain Ida upon his shoulders, and a river, which flowed from the mountain running down along the giant's back, as he held it up in that posture. There is a description too in Virgil, which, I think, is censurable, though more slightly, in this respect. It is that of the burning mountain Etna; a subject certainly very proper to be worked up by a poet into a Sublime description:

Horrificis juxta tonat Ætna ruinis.

Interdumque atram prorumpit ad æthera nubem;
Turbine fumantem piceo, et candente favillâ ;
Attollitque globos flammarum, et sidera lambit.
Interdum scopulos, avulsaque viscera montis
Erigit eructans, liquefactaque saxa sub auras
Cum gemitu glomerat fundoque exæstuat imo."

EN. III. 571.

Here, after several magnificent images, the poet concludes with personifying the mountain under this figure, "eructans viscera cum gemitu," belching up its bowels with a groan; which, by likening the mountain to a sick, or drunk person, degrades the majesty of the description. It is to no purpose to tell us, that the poet here alludes to the fable of the giant

The port capacious, and secure from wind,
Is to the foot of thund'ring Etna joined ;
By turns a pitchy cloud she rolls on high,
By turns hot embers from her entrails fly,

And flakes of mounting flames that lick the sky.

Oft from her bowels massy rocks are thrown,

And shivered by the force, come piece-meal down:

Oft liquid lakes of burning sulphur flow,
Fed from the fiery springs that boil below.

DRYDEN.

In this translation of Dryden's, the debasing circumstance to which I object in the original, is, with propriety, omitted.

F

Enceladus lying under Mount Etna; and that he supposes his motions and tossings to have occasioned the fiery eruptions. He intended the description of a Sublime object; and the natural ideas raised by a burning mountain are infinitely more lofty than the belchings of any giant, how huge soever. The debasing effect of the idea which is here presented, will appear in a stronger light, by seeing what figure it makes in a poem of Sir Richard Blackmore's, who, through a monstrous perversity of taste, had chosen this for the capital circumstance in his description, and thereby (as Dr. Arbuthnot humorously observes, in his Treatise on the Art of Sinking) had represented the mountain as in a fit of the cholic.

Etna and all the burning mountains, find

Their kindled stores with inbred storms of wind
Blown up to rage, and roaring out, complain,
As torn with inward gripes and torturing pain;
Labouring, they cast their dreadful vomit round,
And with their melted bowels spread the ground.

Such instances show how much the Sublime depends upon a just selection of circumstances; and with how great care every circumstance must be avoided, which by bordering in the least upon the mean, or even upon the gay or the trifling, alters the tone of the emotion.

If it shall now be inquired, what are the proper sources of the Sublime? My answer is, That they 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. stands clear for the most part of these laboured refinements of art. 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.

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.

From the account which I have 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. Shakespeare 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 reader's 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.

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 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 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 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 exclamations, 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 joined ?

Methinks, I hear the drums 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 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. The emotion which it raises is very distinguishable from that of Sublimity. It is of a calmer kind; more gentle and soothing; does not elevate the mind so much, but produces an agreeable serenity. Sublimity raises a feeling, too violent, as I showed 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, differ 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. 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. 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. 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

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.