Numberless other instances might be mentioned of things that have only a relative beauty. This, indeed, is the case with most things which naturę has destined to be only parts of some whole; and which, accordingly, are beautiful only in their pro-. per places. A few years ago, it was not unusual to see a picture of a lady's eye in the possession of her friend or admirer; and there is a possibility that the effect might not be disagreeable to those whose memory was able to supply readily the rest of the fea tures. To a stranger (if I may judge from my own feelings) it was scarcely less offensive than if it had been painted in the middle of her forehead. ·

In reasoning about the Beautiful, Mr Burke confines his attention, almost exclusively, to those elements of Beauty which are intrinsically pleasing, assuming it probably in his own mind, as self-evident, that Beauty, when exhibited in the works of Nature, and in the compositions of Art, is produced by a combination of these alone. If, instead of following this synthetical process, he had begun with considering, the Beautiful in its more complicated forms (the point of view unquestionably in which it is most interesting to a philosopher to examine it, when his aim is to illustrate its relation to the power of Taste), he could not have failed to have been led analytically to this distinction between the intrinsic and the relative beauties of its constituent elements, and to perceive that the one class is as essential as the other to the general result.

The same remark may be extended to that external sense from which the power of Taste borrows

1

its name; and to which, in a variety of respects, it will be found to bear a very close analogy. Among simple tastes, such as sweet, sour, bitter, hot, pungent, there are some which are intrinsically grateful; while others, which are not less necessary ingredients in some of our most delicious mixtures, are positively disagreeable in a separate state. At the head of the former class, sweet seems to be placed by universal consent; and, accordingly, it is called by Mr Burke the beautiful of taste. In speaking, however, of those more refined and varied gratifications of the palate to which the arts of luxury minister, it is not to any one simple taste, but to mixtures or compositions, resulting from a skilful combination of them, that the epithet beautiful (supposing this new phraseology to be adopted) ought, according to strict analogy, to be applied. Agreeably to this view of the subject, sweet may be said to be intrinsically pleasing, and bitter to be relatively pleasing; while both are, in many cases, equally essential to those effects, which, in the art of cookery, correspond to that composite beauty, which it is the object of the painter and of the poet to

create.

A great deal of what Mr Price has so ingeniously observed, with respect to the picturesque, is applicable to what I have here called relative beauty; and so far as this is the case, instead of making the Picturesque a distinct genus from the Beautiful, it would certainly have been more logical to say, that the former is, in some cases, an important element in the composition of the latter. For my own part,

I cannot conceive any principle whatever on which we can reasonably refuse a place among the elements or constituents of beauty, to a class of qualities which are acknowledged, on all hands, to render what was formerly beautiful more beautiful still.

But it is not on this ground alone that I object to Mr Price's language. The meaning he has annexed to the word picturesque is equally exceptionable with the limited and arbitrary notion concerning the beautiful, which he has adopted from Mr Burke. In both cases, he has departed widely from established use; and, in consequence of this, when he comes to compare, according to his peculiar definitions, the picturesque and the beautiful together, he has given to many observations, equally just and refined, an air of paradox, which might have been easily avoided, by employing a more cautious phraseology. In justification of this criticism, it is necessary to introduce here a few remarks on the different acceptations in which the epithet picturesque has been hitherto understood in this country, since it was naturalized by the authority of our classical writers. *

And first, as to the oldest and most general use of the word; it seems to me an unquestionable proposition, That if this is to be appealed to as the standard of propriety, the word does not refer immediately to landscapes, or to any visible objects, but to verbal description. It means that graphical power by which Poetry and Eloquence produce ef

* See Note (U.)

fects on the mind analogous to those of a picture. Thus, every person would naturally apply the epithet to the following description of a thunder-storm in Thomson's Seasons:

"Black from the stroke above, the mountain-pine,
"A leaning shatter'd trunk, stands scath'd to heaven,
"The talk of future ages; and below,

"A lifeless group the blasted cattle lie:

"Here the soft flocks, with that same harmless look
"They wore alive, and ruminating still

"In fancy's eye; and there the frowning bull
"And ox half raised.".

To prevent, however, any misapprehensions of my meaning, it is proper to add, that, in speaking of the graphical power of Poetry and Eloquence, I would not be understood to limit that epithet (according to its etymology) to objects of Sight; but to extend it to all those details of whatever kind, by a happy selection of which the imagination may be forcibly impressed. In the following sentence, Dr Warton applies the word picturesque (and I think with the most exact propriety) to a passage of Thomson, where it is somewhat curious, that every cir cumstance mentioned recals some impression upon the Ear alone.

"How full," says Warton, "how particular and picturesque, is this assemblage of circumstances, "that attend a very keen frost in a night of win"ter!"

"Loud rings the frozen earth, and hard reflects
"A double noise; while at his evening watch,
"The village dog deters the nightly thief:

"The heifer lows; the distant waterfall

"Swells in the breeze; and with the hasty tread

"Of traveller, the hollow-sounding plain

"Shakes from afar."

This use of the word picturesque is analogous to the common signification of other words which have a similar termination, and are borrowed from the Italian, through the medium of the French. The word arabesque, for example, expresses something which is executed in the style of the Arabians; moresque, something in the style of the Moors and grotesque, something bearing a resemblance to certain whimsical paintings found in a grotto, or subterraneous apartment at Rome. In like manner, picturesque properly means what is done in the style, and with the spirit of a painter; and it was thus, if I am not much mistaken, that the word was commonly employed, when it was first adopted in England. Agreeably to the same idea, the Persians, it is said, distinguish the different degrees of descriptive power in different writers, by calling them painters or sculptors: in allusion to which practice, the title of a sculptor-poet has been bestowed by a very ingenious critic on Lucretius, in consequence of the singularly bold relief which he gives to his images. *

Of late years, since a taste for landscape-painting came to be fashionable in this island, the word picturesque has been frequently employed to denote those combinations or groups or attitudes of objects,

* Dr Warton, Essay on the Genius of Pope, Vol. II. p. 165.