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-He, above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
Stood like a tower; his form had not yet lost
All her original brightness, nor appear'd
Less than an archangel ruin'd, and the excess
Of glory obscur'd; as when the sun new risen,
Looks through the horizontal misty air,
Shorn of his beams; or, from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. Darken'd so, yet shone
Above them all th' archangel.

Here various sources of the sublime are joined together: the principal object superlatively great a high, superior nature, fallen indeed, but raising itself against distress; the grandeur of the principal object heightened by connecting it with so noble an idea as that of the sun suffering an eclipse; this picture shaded with all those images of change and trouble, of darkness and terror, which coincide so exquisitely with the sublime emotion, and the whole expressed in a style and versification easy, natural and simple, but magnificent.

Beside simplicity and conciseness, strength is essentially necessary to sublime writing. Strength of description proceeds in a great measure from conciseness but it implies something more, namely, a judicious choice of circumstances in the description; such as will exhibit the object in its full and most striking point of view. For every object has several faces, by which it may be presented to us, according 'to the circumstances with which we surround it; and it will appear superlatively sublime or not, in proportion as these circumstances are happily chosen, and of a sublime kind. In this the great art of the writer consists, and, indeed, the principal difficulty of sublime description. If the description be too general and divested of circumstances, the object is shewn in a faint light, and makes a feeble impression, or no im. pression on the reader. At the same time, if any trivial or improper circumstances be mingled, the whole iş degraded.

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The nature of that emotion which is aimed at by sublime description, admits no mediocrity, and cannot subsist in a middle state; but must either highly transport us, or, if unsuccessful in the execution, leave us exceedingly disgusted. We attempt to rise with the writer; the imagination is awakened, and put upon the stretch; but it ought to be supported; and if, in the midst of its effort, it be deserted unexpectedly, it falls with a painful shock. When Milton, in his battle of the angels, describes them as tearing up mountains, and throwing them at one another,there are in his description, as Mr. Addison has remarked, no circumstances but what are truly sublime :

From their foundations loos'ning to and fro,
They pluck'd the seated hills with all their load,
Rocks, waters, woods; and by the shaggy tops
Uplifting, bore them in their hands.

This idea of the giants' throwing the mountains, which is in itself so grand, Claudian renders burlesque and ridiculous by the single circumstance of one of his giants with the mountain Ida upon his shoulders, and a river which flowed from the mountain, running down the giant's back, as he held it up in that posture. Virgil, in his description of mount Etna, is guilty of a slight inaccuracy of this kind. 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 making the mountain resemble a sick or drunken person, degrades the majesty of the description. The debasing effect of this idea will appear in a stronger light, from observing what figure it makes in a poem of Sir Richard Blackmore; who, through an extravagant perversity of taste, selected it for the principal circumstance in his description; and thereby, as Dr. Ar

buthnot humorously observes, represented the mountain as in a fit of the colic.

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 proper selection of circumstances, and with how great care every circumstance must be avoided, which, by approaching in the smallest degree to the mean, or even to the gay or trifling, changes the tone of the emotion.

What is commonly called the sublime style is, for the most part, a very bad one, and has no relation whatever to the true Sublime. Writers are apt to imagine that splendid words, accumulated epithets, and a certain swelling kind of expression, by rising above what is customary or vulgar, constitute the Sublime; yet nothing is in reality more false. In genuine instances of sublime writing nothing of this kind appears. "God said, Let there be light, and there was light." This is striking and sublime: but put 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 justly observed, the style is indeed raised, but the thought is degraded. In general it may be observed, that the Sublime lies in the thought, not in the expression; and when the thought is really noble, it will generally clothe itself in a native majesty of language.

The faults opposite to the Sublime are principally two, the Frigid and the Bombast. The Frigid consists in degrading an object or sentiment, which is sublime in itself, by a mean conception of it; or by a weak, low, or puerile description of it. This betrays entire absence, or at least extreme poverty of genius. The Bombast lies in forcing a common or trivial object out of its rank, and in labouring to raise it into the

sublime; or in attempting to exalt a sublime object beyond all natural bounds.

BEAUTY AND OTHER PLEASURES OF TASTE.

BEAUTY, next to Sublimity, affords the highest pleasure to the imagination. The emotion which it raises is easily distinguished from that of Sublimity. It is of a calmer kind, more gentle and soothing; does not elevate the mind so much, but produces a pleasing serenity. Sublimity excites a feeling too violent to be lasting; the pleasure proceeding from Beauty admits longer duration. It extends also to a much greater variety of objects than Sublimity; to a variety, indeed, so great, that the sensations which beautiful objects excite, differ exceedingly, not in degree only, but also in kind, from each other. Hence, no word is used in a more undetermined signification than Beauty. It is applied to almost every external object which pleases the eye or the ear; to many of the graces of writing; to several dispositions of the mind; nay, to some objects, of abstract science. We speak frequently of a beautiful tree or flower, a beautiful poem, a beautiful character, and a beautiful theorem in mathematics.

Color seems to afford the simplest instance of Beauty. Association of ideas, it is probable, has some influence on the pleasure we receive from colors. Green, for example, may appear more beautiful from being connected in our ideas with rural scenes and prospects; white, with innocence; blue, with the serenity of the sky. Independently of associations of this sort, all that we can further observe respecting colors is, that those chosen for beauty are commonly delicate rather than glaring. Such are the feathers of several kinds of birds, the leaves of flowers, and the fine variation of colors shewn by the sky at the rising and setting of the sun.

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Figure opens to us forms of Beauty more complex and diversified. Regularity first offers itself as a source of Beauty. By a regular figure is meant one which we perceive to be formed according to some certain rule, and not left arbitrary or loose in the construction of its parts. Thus a circle, a square, a triangle or a hexagon, gives pleasure to the eye by its regularity, as a beautiful figure. Yet a certain graceful variety is found to be a much more powerful principle of Beauty. Regularity seems to appear beautiful to us chiefly, if not entirely, on account of its suggesting the ideas of fitness, propriety and use, which have always a more intimate connexion with orderly and proportioned forms, than with those which appear not constructed according to any certain rule. Nature, who is the most graceful artist, hath, in all her ornamental works, pursued variety with an apparent neglect of regularity. Cabinets, doors, and windows are made after a regular form, in cubes and parallelograms, with exact proportion of parts; and, thus formed, they please the eye; for this just reason, that, being works of use, they are by such figures better adapted to the ends for which they were designed. But plants, flowers and leaves are full of variety and diversity. A straight canal is an insipid figure, when compared with the meanders of a river. Cones and

pyramids have their degree of beauty; but trees, growing in their natural wildness, have infinitely more beauty than when trimmed into pyramids and cones. The apartments of a house must be disposed with regularity for the convenience of its inhabitants; but a garden, which is intended merely for beauty, would be extremely disgusting, if it had as much uniformity and order as a dwelling-house.

Motion affords another source of Beauty distinct from figure. Motion of itself is pleasing; and bodies in motion are, "cæteris paribus," universally preferred to those at rest. Only gentle motion, however,belongs to the Beautiful; for when it is swift or very powerful,such as that of a torrent, it partakes of the Sublime. The

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