CHAPTER IX.

I HAVE endeavoured to the best of my abilities, and according to the observations I have made in a long habit of reflection on the subject, to trace the ideas we have of the picturesque, through the different works of art and nature: and it appears to me, that in all objects of sight, in buildings, trees, water, ground, in the human species, and in other animals, the same general principles uniformly prevail; and that even light and shadow, and colours, have the strongest conformity to

those principles. I have compared both its causes and effects, with those of the sublime and the beautiful; I have shewn its distinctness from them both, and in what that distinctness consists.

I may perhaps, however, be able to throw some additional light on the subject, by considering two qualities the most opposite to beauty-those of ugliness and deformity; by shewing in what points they differ from each other, and under what circumstances they may form a union with other qualities and characters. According to Mr. Burke, those objects are the ugliest, which арproach most nearly to angular*; but I think he would scarcely have given that opinion, if he had thought it worth while to investigate so ungrateful a subject as that of ugliness, with the same attention as that of beauty: for if his position be true, the leaves of the plane-tree and the vine, are among the ugliest of the vegetable kingdom. It seems to me, that mere unmixed ug

Sublime and Beautiful, page 217.

liness does not arise from sharp angles, or from any sudden variation; but rather from that want of form, that unshapen lumpish appearance, which, perhaps, no one word exactly expresses; a quality (if what is negative may be so called) which never can be mistaken for beauty, never can adorn it, and which is equally unconnected with the sublime, and the picturesque. The remains of Grecian sculpture afford us the most generally acknowledged models of beauty of form, in its most exquisitely finished state; if this be granted, every change that could be made in such models, must be a diminution of the perfect character of beauty, and an approach towards some other. Were an artist, for instance, to model, in any soft material, a head from the Venus or the Apollo, and then by way of experiment to make the nose longer or sharper; rising more suddenly towards the middle; or strongly aquiline; were he to give a striking projection to the eye-brow, or to interrupt by some marked deviation the flowing outline of the face,-though he

would destroy beauty, yet he might create character; and something grand or picturesque, might be produced by such a trial. But let him take the contrary method, let him clog and fill up all those nicely marked variations of which beauty is the result, ugliness, and that only must be the consequence. Should he proceed still further with his experiment, should he twist the mouth, make the nose awry, of a preposterous size, and place warts and carbuncles upon it, or wens and excrescencies on other parts of the face, he would then graft deformity upon ugliness.

Deformity is to ugliness, what picturesqueness is to beauty; though distinct from it, and in many cases arising from opposite causes, it is often mistaken for it, often accompanies it, and greatly heightens its effect. Ugliness alone, is merely disagreeable; by the addition of deformity, it becomes hideous; by that of terror it may become sublime. All these are mixed in the

Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum. Deformity in itself, however, has no con

nection with the sublime; and when terror can be produced by circumstances of a more elevated character, may even injure it's effect. Death, for instance, is commonly painted as a skeleton; but Milton, in his famous description, has made no allusion to that deformity (if it may be called so) which is usual in the representation of the king of terrors; possibly from judging that its distinctness would take off from that mysterious uncertainty, which has rendered his picture so awfully sublime.

The other shape,

If shape it might be called, which shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;

Or substance might be called, which shadow seem'd,

For each seem'd either; black it stood as night,

Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,

And shook a deadly dart; what seem'd his head,
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

The union of deformity with beauty, is, from the contrast, more striking than any other; but it is in the same proportion disgusting and so far from raising any grand ideas, has rather a tendency to excite those that are ludicrous. Such I think it ap