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included in his enumeration, excite either astonishment or admiration, sentiments not analagous to terror. A mountain, a lofty and spacious building, are sublime without being terrible.

When he comes to speak of beauty, he propounds a theory, of which the following is the substance. Beauty is that quality, or those qualities, of bodies by which they cause love, or some passion similar to it. This idea cannot arise from proportion, since, in vegetables and animals, there is no standard by which we can measure our ideas of proportion; and in man, exact proportion is not always the criterion of beauty; neither can it arise from fitness, since, then, all animals would have beauty; for every one seems best adapted to its own way of living; and in man, strength would have the name of beauty, which, however, presents a very different idea. Nor is it the result of perfection; for we are often charmed with the imperfections of an agreeable object. Nor, lastly, of the qualities and virtues of the

mind; since such rather conciliate our esteem than our love. Beauty, therefore, is no creature of reason, but some merely senşible quality acting mechanically upon the mind, by the intervention of the senses.First, the qualities of beauty, as they are merely sensible qualities, are comparative smallness. Secondly, they must be smooth. Thirdly, they must have a variety in the direction of their parts. Fourthly, they must have those parts not angular, but melted, were, into each other Fifthly, they

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must be of a delicate frame, without any remarkable appearance of strength. Sixthly, they must have their colours clear and bright, but not very strong and glaring. Seventhly, or if they should have any glaring colour, they must have it diversified with others.

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Under the head of beauty he considers those qualities of sound of which the tion is analogous to that of beautiful objects of sight. In sounds, the most beautiful are the soft and delicate; not that strength of note required to raise other passions, nor

notes which are shrill, or harsh, or deep. It agrees best with such as are clear, even, smooth, and weak. Thus there is a remarkable contrast between the beautiful and the sublime: sublime objects are vast in their dimensions; beautiful ones comparatively small. Beauty should be smooth and polished; the great, rugged and negligent. Beauty should not be obscure; the great ought to be dark and gloomy. Beauty should be light and delicate; the great ought to be solid, and even massive. A great part of this enumeration is, no doubt, just. Most writers have resolved beauty into colour, figure, motion, and adaptation to an end; and in the beauty of sentient and rational creatures have included the expression of countenance. Mr. Hume considers the other constituents as subservient to utility, and makes fitness the criterion of beauty. In this Mr. Hume probably errs, as many things are useful which are not beautiful, and many are beautiful which are not useful. But if Mr. Hume lays too great a stress on utility as a constituent of beauty, Mr. Burke appears to lay too little. Beauty and utility

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are certainly not, as Mr. Hume alledges, identical; but they co-exist much more constantly than Mr. Burke's hypothesis * seems to allow.

But though somewhat fanciful in parts of his theory, Burke is a perspicuous observer, and a philosophical investigator. In his detail of constituents, he is accurate and comprehensive; in his assignation of efficient causes, often just, sometimes imaginative, always acute and ingenious; in his reasoning on final causes, profound, wise, and pious.

We may consider the Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful in two lights,-as an addition to literature and an exhibition of genius. It affords the greatest accession to the knowledge of a most important branch of pneumatology, and its appropriate objects, of any work which has yet appeared. Succeeding writers, who have rejected the

* The system of our author, in several respects, concurs with that of Hutchinson, who placed beauty in uniformity, mingled with variety, altho' he dwells more on the latter than the former. It coincides with Hogarth's analysis of beauty.

theory, have done little more than copy the account of the phænomena, especially on the sublime. It displays the learning of a scholar, the invention of a poet, and the wisdom of a philosopher. Johnson considered this work as a model of philosophical criticism. • We have (he said) an example of true criticism in Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. There is no great merit in shewing how many plays have ghosts in them, or how this ghost is better than that, you must shew how terror is impressed on the human heart,'

Burke, from this work, soon became universally known and admired. The ignorant and superficial, from the subject, believed him to be a man of taste; the learned and the wise, from the execution, knew him to be a man of taste and profound philosophy.

On perusing Burke's book, his father was so enraptured as to send him a remittance of one hundred pounds; from him a considerable sum, as he had not then got the es

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