whimsical wonders," he very justly adds, "lose their effect when represented in a picture, or mimicked in ground artificially laid. As accidents they may surprise ; but they are not objects of choice."

To these observations we may add, that even where every thing appears perfectly natural and probable in a work of imagination, it may yet offend the taste, by exhibiting what would be highly pleasing in a historical composition. There are few books more interesting than Hume's History of England; but, if we conceive the events to be fictitious, it would make a very indifferent romance. The truth seems to be, that in a piece, where the story is plainly a fabrication, and where even the names of the characters are fictitious, it is impossible to keep up the reader's interest, without a plot, which evidently advances as the work proceeds, and to which all the various incidents are conceived to be somehow or other subservient. Hence the stress laid by so many critics, ancient and modern, on the importance of unity of fable, in epic, and still more in tragic poetry. Nor do the historical plays of Shakspeare furnish a real exception to the general remark. Some of the most popular of these, it must indeed be confessed, consist entirely of a series of incidents, which have little or no connexion but what they derive from their supposed relation to the fortunes of the same man. But such pieces, it will be found, do not interest and affect us, on the same principles with works of imagination. We conceive them to exhibit facts which really happened, considering them partly in the light of dramatic performances, and partly of histories; and, in consequence of this, make allowance for many details, which, in a fable professedly the offspring of the poet's invention, we should have pronounced to be absurd.

It would be worth while to examine what kind of incidents please in fictitious composition; and to ascertain the principles and rules of this kind of writing. What has been already observed is sufficient to show, that the pleasure we derive from it is not owing merely to its enlarging the narrow limits of real history, by new and unheard-of events; but to something peculiar in the nature

of the events, and in the manner of connecting them together.

After all, however, less practical danger is to be apprehended from transferring to the imitative arts, those habits of feeling and judging which have been formed by actual experience and observation, than from a transference to human life and external nature, of ideas borrowed from the imitative arts. If, in the former case, an artist may be disappointed in producing the agreeable effect at which he aims; in the latter, he may expect the more serious inconvenience of contracting a fantastic singularity of opinions and manners, or of impairing his relish for the primary beauties which nature exhibits.

A long and exclusive familiarity with fictitious narratives (it has been often observed) has a tendency to weaken the interest we take in the ordinary business of the world; and the slightest attempt to fashion the manners after such models as they supply, never fails to appear ludicrous in the extreme. The case is nearly similar with the painter who applies, to the beauties of a rich and varied prospect, the rules of his own limited art; or who, in the midst of such a scene, loses its general effect, in the contemplation of some accidental combination of circumstances suited to his canvass. But on this point I have already enlarged at sufficient length.

I intended to have prosecuted still farther the subject of this Essay, and to have added to it some supplemental observations on the import of the word beauty, when applied to Virtue; to Philosophical Theories; to Geometrical Propositions, and to some other classes of Scientific Discoveries; in all of which instances, the principles already stated will be found to afford an easy explanation of various apparent anomalies in the use of the expression. Enough, however, has been already said, for the purposes I have in view in the sequel of this volume; and I shall, therefore, reserve the topics now mentioned for future discussion.

ESSAY SECOND.

ON THE SUBLIME.

PREFACE.

My thoughts were first turned particularly to this subject, by the opposite judgments which have been lately pronounced on the merits of Mr. Burke's theory of the Sublime, by two writers of great originality, acuteness, and taste,-Mr. Price and Mr. Knight. The former of these gentlemen having done me the honor, in spring, 1808, to allow me the perusal of a very valuable supplement to what he has already published in defence of the doctrines of his late illustrious friend, I was induced to commit to writing, a few hasty and unconnected notes, on some incidental points to which his manuscript had attracted my attention. It was upon this occasion, that the leading idea occurred to me which runs through the whole of the following Essay; and which I had the boldness to communicate to Mr. Price, in the very crude form in which it at first presented itself. At that period, I had little or no intention to prosecute it any farther; but having afterwards recollected its close analogy to a principle which forms the basis of the foregoing speculations concerning the Beautiful, I resolved to resume the consideration of it more deliberately, as soon as my necessary engagements should permit; in the hope that the two discussions might reflect additional lights on each other. In this I flatter myself that I have not been altogether disappointed; and accordingly, I have placed them together, in arranging the materials of this volume; although without any direct references in either to the parallel train of thought pursued in the other. An attentive reader will be able easily to collect for himself the general results to which they lead.

The Essay on the Beautiful has been lying by me, much in the same state in which it now appears, for several years. The greater part of that on the Sublime, (with the exception of a few pages, which I have copied very nearly from the notes transmitted to Mr. Price) was written last summer, during a short residence in a distant part of the country, where I had no opportunity whatever of consulting books. I mention this merely to account for the selection of my illustrations, many of which, I am sensible, may appear too hackneyed to be introduced into a disquisition, which it would have been desirable to enliven and adorn by examples possessing something more of the zest of novelty and variety. At first I intended to have corrected this fault, as far as I was able, in transcribing my papers for the press; but, on more mature reflection, it struck me forcibly, that the quotations which had offered themselves spontaneously to my memory, while engaged in the consideration of general principles, were likely from the very circumstance of their triteness, to possess some important advantages over any that I could substitute in their place. They show, at least, by their familiarity to every ear, that I have not gone far out of my way, in quest of instances to support a preconceived hypothesis; and afford a presumption, that the conclusions to which I have been led, are the natural result of impressions and associations not confined to a small number of individuals. Whether indolence may not have contributed somewhat to fortify me in these opinions, it is now too late for me to consider.

ON THE SUBLIME.

CHAPTER FIRST.

OF SUBLIMITY, IN THE LITERAL SENSE OF THE WORD.

AMONG the writers who have hitherto attempted to ascertain the nature of the Sublime, it has been very generally, if not universally taken for granted, that there must exist some common quality in all the various objects characterized by this common epithet. In their researches, however, concerning the essential constituent of Sublimity, the conclusions to which they have been led are so widely different from each other, that one would scarcely suppose, on a superficial view, they could possibly relate to the same class of phenomena;— a circumstance the more remarkable, that, in the statement of these phenomena, philosophical critics are, with a few trifling exceptions, unanimously agreed. ́.

Mr Burke seems disposed to think, that the essence. of the sublime is the terrible, operating either openly or more latently.* Helvetius has adopted the same general idea, but has expressed it (in my opinion) rather more precisely; asserting, that "the sublime of imagery always supposes an emotion of terror begun; and that it cannot be produced by any other cause." † Dr. Blair, with great diffidence, has hazarded a conjecture, that the solution of the problem is to be found in the idea of mighty power or force; and Mr. Knight has lately contended for a theory which ascribes the effect in question

*In one passage, he asserts this, in very unqualified terms: "Terror is, in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling principle of the sublime."(Part ii. Sect. 2.)

In other instances he expresses himself more guardedly; speaking of Terror as only one of the sources, though one of the chief sources of Sublimity.

† De l'Homme, de ses facultés, et de son éducation.