pagan antiquity, whether poets or philofophers, nothing at all. And they who confider with what infinite attention, by what a difregard of every perishable object, through what long habits of piety and contemplation it is, any man is able to attain an entire love and devotion to the Deity, will eafily perceive, that it is not the first, the most natural, and the most striking effect which proceeds from that idea. Thus we have traced power through its several gradations unto the highest of all, where our imagination is finally loft; and we find terrour, quite throughout the progrefs, its infeparable companion, and growing along with it, as far as we can poffibly trace them. Now as power is undoubtedly a capital fource of the fublime, this will point out evidently from whence its energy is derived, and to what clafs of ideas we ought to unite it.

SECT. VI.

PRIVATION.

All general privations are great, because they are all terrible; Vacuity, Darkness, Solitude, and Silence. With what a fire of imagination, yet with what severity of judgment, has Virgil amaffed all thefe circumftances, where he knows that all the images of a tremendous dignity ought to be united, at the mouth of hell! where, before he unlocks VOL. I. N

the

the fecrets of the great deep, he seems to be feized with a religious horrour, and to retire aftonished at the boldness of his own defign:

Di quibus imperium eft animarum, umbræque—
filentes!

Et Chaos, et Plegethon! loca nocte filentia late?
Sit mihi fas audita loqui! fit numine veftro

Pandere res alta terra et caligine merfas!
Ibant obfcuri, fola fub nocte, per umbram,
Perque domos Ditis vacuas, et inania regna.

Ye fubterraneous gods! whofe awful fway
The gliding ghofts, and filent fhades obey;
O Chaos, hear! and Phlegethon profound!
Whofe folemn empire ftretches wide around!
Give me, ye great tremendous powers, to tell
Of fcenes, and wonders in the depth of hell:
Give me your mighty fecrets to display
From thofe black realms of darkness to the day.

PITT.

Obfcure they went through dreary shades that led
Along the waste dominions of the dead.

DRYDEN.

SECT.

GREATNESS * of dimenfion is a powerful cause of the fublime. This is too evident, and the obfervation too common, to need any illuftration; it is not fo common to confider in what ways greatnefs of dimenfion, vaftnefs of extent or quantity, has the moft ftriking effect. For certainly, there are ways, and modes, wherein the fame quantity of extenfion fhall produce greater effects than it is found to do in others. Extenfion is either in length, height, or depth. Of these the length ftrikes leaft; an hundred yards of even ground will never work fuch an effect as a tower an hundred yards high, or a rock or mountain of that altitude. I am apt to imagine likewise, that height is lefs grand than depth; and that we are more ftruck at looking down from a precipice, than looking up at an object of equal height; but of that I am not very pofitive. A perpendicular has more force in forming the fublime than an inclined plane; and the effects of a rugged and broken furface seem stronger than where it is fmooth and polifhed. It would carry us out of our way to enter in this place into the caufe of thefe appearances; but certain it is they afford a

large and fruitful field of fpeculation. However, it may not be amifs to add to these remarks upon magnitude, that as the great extreme of dimenfion is fublime, fo the laft extreme of littleness is in fome measure fublime likewife; when we attend to the infinite divifibility of matter, when we pursue animal life into these exceffively small, and yet organized beings, that escape the niceft inquifition of the fenfe, when we push our discoveries yet downward, and confider thofe creatures for many degrees yet smaller, and the still diminishing fcale of existence, in tracing which the imagination is loft as well as the sense, we become amazed and confounded at the wonders of minuteness; nor can we diftinguish in its effect this extreme of littleness from the vaft itself. For divifion muft be infinite as well as addition; becaufe the idea of a perfect unity can no more be arrived at, than that of a complete whole, to which nothing may be added.

SECT. VIII.

INFINITY.

ANOTHER fource of the fublime is Infinity; if it does not rather belong to the laft. Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that fort of delightful horrour, which is the moft genuine effect, and trueft teft of the fublime. There are scarce

any

any things which can become the objects of our fenses, that are really and in their own nature infinite. But the eye not being able to perceive the bounds of many things, they seem to be infinite, and they produce the fame effects as if they were really fo. We are deceived in the like manner, if the parts of fome large object are so continued to any indefinite number, that the imagination meets no check which may hinder its extending them at pleasure.

Whenever we repeat any idea frequently, the mind, by a fort of mechanism, repeats it long after the first cause has ceafed to operate. After whirling about, when we fit down, the objects about us ftill seem to whirl. After a long fucceffion of noises, as the fall of waters, or the beating of forgehammers, the hammers beat and the water roars in the imagination long after the first founds have ceafed to affect it; and they die away at laft by gradations which are scarcely perceptible. If you hold up a ftraight pole, with your eye to one end, it will seem extended to a length almost incre dible. Place a number of uniform and equidiftant marks on this pole, they will caufe the fame deception, and feem multiplied without end. The fenfes, ftrongly affected in fome one manner, cannot quickly change their tenour or adapt them

*Part IV. fect. 12.

+ Part IV. fect. 14.

N 3

felves