A storm or tempest, for instance, is a sublime object in nature But to render it sublime in description, it is not enough either to give us mere general expressions concerning the violence of the tempest, or to describe its common vulgar effects, in overthrowing trees and houses. It must be painted with such circumstances as fill the mind with great and awful ideas. This is very happily done by Virgil, in the following passage:

Ipse Pater, media nimborum in nocte, coruscâ
Fulmina molitur dextrâ ; quo maxima motu
Terra tremit; fugêre feræ; et mortalia corda
Per gentes humilis stravit pavor: Ille flagranti
Aut Atho, aut Rhodopen, aut alta Ceraunia telo
Dejicit.*-

GEOR. 1.

Every circumstance in this noble description is the production of an imagination heated and astonished with the grandeur of the object. If there be any defect, it is in the words immediately following those I have quoted: "Ingeminant Austri, et densissimus imber;" where the transition is made too hastily, I am afraid, from the preceding sublime images, to a thick shower, and the blowing of the south wind; and shows how difficult it frequently is to descend with grace, without seeming to fall.

The high importance of the rule which I have been now giving, concerning the proper choice of circumstances, when description is meant to be sublime, seems to me not to have been sufficiently attended to. It has, however, such a foundation in nature, as renders the least deflexion from it fatal. When a writer is aiming at the beautiful only, his descriptions may have improprieties in them, and yet be beautiful still. Some trivial, or misjudged circumstances, can be overlooked by the reader; they make only the difference of more or less: the gay, or pleasing emotion, which he has raised, subsists still. But the case is quite different with the sublime. There, one trifling circumstance, one mean idea, is sufficient to destroy the whole charm. This is owing to the nature of the emotion aimed at by sublime description, which admits of no mediocrity, and cannot subsist in a middle state; but must 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

* The father of the gods his glory shrouds,
Involv'd in tempests, and a night of clouds;
And from the middle darkness flashing out,
By fits he deals his fiery bolts about.
Earth feels the motions of her angry God,
Her entrails tremble, and her mountains nod,
And flying beasts in forests seek abode.
Deep horror seizes every human breast;
Their pride is humbled, and their fears confest :
While he, from high, his rolling thunder throws,
And fires the mountains with repeated blows;
The rocks are from their old foundations rent,
The winds redouble, and the rains augment.
G

DRYDEN.

angels, decribes 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'd 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 upon 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 Ætna; a subject certainly very proper to be worked up by a poet into a sub lime description:

EN. III. 571.

Horrificis juxta tonat Ætna ruinis. Interdumque atram prorumpit ad æthera nubem, Turbine fumantem piceo, et candente favilla; Attollitque globos flammarum, et sidera lambit. Interdum scopulos, avulsaque viscera montis Erigit eructans, liquefactaque saxa sub auras Cum gemitu glomerat, fundoque exæstuat imo." 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 Enceladus lying under mount Ætna; 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 humourously observes, in his Treatise on the Art of Sinking,) had represented the mountain as in a fit of the cholic.

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

Blown ap 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 rhetori cal assistances, that we can expect to produce it. No: it stands clear, for the most part, of these laboured refinements of art. It .nust 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. Shakspeare 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 join'd?
Methinks, I hear the drum's 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 be

yond 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. Shakspeare, 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 the 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.

QUESTIONS.

HAVING treated of grandeur or sub- what manner does he frequently delimity in external objects, for what part? How is this illustrated? What does the way seem now to be cleared? are the five sources of the sublime pointWhy may the sublime in writing be ed out by him? Of this plan, what is examined here with as much propriety remarked; and why? From this what as in any subsequent part of the lec- appears? What remarks are made of tures? What evidence have we that Longinus, as a critic and a writer? the sublime has often been employed Why was it necessary for our author in a loose and vague sense? Why is to give his opinion of his work; and this mentioned? What is the true sense why should it be consulted? Where of sublime writing? What indefinite, must the foundation of the sublime in and therefore very improper sense, has composition be laid? When is the deoften been applied to it? If this were scription not entitled to come under this correct, what would be the conse-class? What objects does this exclude? quence? By whom is the sublime in How must the object be set before us, this improper sense often used? How and described? On what does this princidoes he set out; but from this view, inpally depends? If his own feelings be