I mean, that an orator of the true genius must have no mean and ungenerous way of thinking. For it is impossible for those who have grovelling and servile ideas, or are engaged in the sordid pursuits of life, to produce any thing worthy of admiration, and the perusal of all posterity. Grand and sublime expressions must flow from them and them alone, whose conceptions are stored and big with greatness. And hence it is, that the greatest thoughts are always uttered by the greatest souls. When Parmenio cried, 2" I would " accept

grief is abrupt, because it is inexpressible. The heart is melted in an instant, and tears will start at once in any audience that has generosity enough to be moved, or is capable of sorrow and pity.

When words are too weak, or colours too faint to represent a Pathos, as the poet will be silent, so the painter will hide what he cannot shew. Timanthes, in his sacrifice of Iphigenia, gave Calchas a sorrowful look, he then painted Ulysses more sorrowful, and afterwards her uncle Menelaus, with all the grief and concern in his countenance which his pencil was able to display. By this gradation he had exhausted the passion, and had no art left for the distress of her father Agamemnon, which required the strongest heightning of all. He therefore covered up his head in his garment, and left the spectator to imagine that excess of anguish which colours were unable to express.

? I would accept these proposals-&c.] There is a great

accept these proposals, if I was Alexander;' Alexander made this noble reply, "And so "would I, if I was Parmenio." His answer shewed the greatness of his mind.

So the space between heaven and earth marks

great gap in the original after these words. The sense has been supplied by the editors, from the well-known records of history. The proposals here mentioned were made to Alexander by Darius; and were no less than his own daughter, and half his kingdom, to purchase peace. They would have contented Parmenio, but were quite too small for the extensive views of his master.

Dr. Pearce, in his note to this passage, has instanced a brave reply of Iphicrates. When he appeared to answer an accusation preferred against him by Aristophon, he demanded of him, " Whether he would have "betrayed his country for a sum of money?" Aristophon replied in the negative. "Have I then done," cried Iphicrates, "what even you would have scorned "to do?"

There is the same evidence of a generous heart, in the prince of Orange's reply to the duke of Buckingham, who, to incline him to an inglorious peace with the French, demanded what he could do in that desperate situation of himself and his country? Not to live "to see its ruin, but die in the last dike."

These short replies have more force, shew a greater soul, and make deeper impressions, than the most laboured discourses. The soul seems to rouse and collect itself, and then darts forth at once in the noblest and most conspicuous point of view.

3

Longinus here sets out in all the pomp and spirit of

marks out the vast reach and capacity of Homer's ideas, when he says*,

• While scarce the skies her horrid head can bound, She stalks on earth.- MR. POPE.

This

Homer. How vast is the reach of man's imagination! and what a vast idea, "The space between heaven and earth," is here placed before it! Dr. Pearce has taken notice of such a thought in the Wisdom of Solomon: "Thy almighty word leaped down-it touched the "heaven, but it stood upon the earth." Chap. xviii. 15, 16.

*Iliad. S. v. 443.

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See the note to this description of Discord, in Mr. Pope's translation. Virgil has copied it verbatim, but applied it to Fame.

Ingrediturque solo & caput inter nubila condit.

Soon grows the pigmy to gigantic size,

Her feet on earth, her forehead in the skies.

Shakespeare, without any imitation of these great masters, has, by the natural strength of his own genius, described the extent of Slander in the greatest pomp of expression, elevation of thought, and fertility of invention:

-Slander,

Whose head is sharper than the sword, whose tongue Out-venoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie

All corners of the world. Kings, queens, and states, Maids, matrons, nay the secrets of the grave,

This viperous slander enters.- -CYMBELINE. And Milton's description of Satan, when he prepares for the combat, is (according to Mr. Addison, Spectator, N° 321.) equally sublime with either the description of Discord in Homer, or that of Fame in Virgil:

Satan

This description may with more justice be applied to Homer's genius than the extent of discord.

But what disparity, what a fall there is in * Hesiod's description of melancholy, if the poem of the Shield may be ascribed to him! A filthy

Satan alarm'd,

Collecting all his might, dilated stood

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Like Teneriff or Atlas unremov'd:

His stature reach'd the sky, and on his crest
Sat horror plum'd

The image of Hesiod, here blamed by Longinus, is borrowed from low life, and has something in it exceedingly nasty. It offends the stomach, and of course cannot be approved by the judgment. This brings to my remembrance the conduct of Milton, in his description of Sin and Death, who are set off in the most horrible deformity. In that of Sin, there is indeed something loathsome; and what ought to be painted in that manner sooner than Sin? Yet the circumstances are picked out with the nicest skill, and raise a rational abhorrence of such hideous objects.

The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fold,
Voluminous and vast! a serpent arm'd
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal: Yet when they list, would creep,
If ought disturb'd their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still bark'd, and howl'd
Within, unseen-

A filthy moisture from her nostrils flow'd*.

He has not represented his image terrible, but loathsome and nauseous.

Of Death he says,

On

black it stood as night,

Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,

And shook a dreadful dart.

But Milton's judiciousness in selecting such circumstances as tend to raise a just and natural aversion, is no where more visible than in his description of a Lazar-house, Book 11th. An inferior genius might have amused himself, with expatiating on the filthy and nauseous objects abounding in so horrible a scene, and written perhaps like a surgeon rather than a poet. But Milton aims only at the passions, by shewing the miseries entailed upon man, in the most affecting manner, and exciting at once our horror at the woes of the afflicted, and a generous sympathy in all their afflictions. Immediately a place

Before his eyes appear'd, sad, noisome, dark, &c. It is too long to quote, but the whole is exceedingly poetic, the latter part of it sublime, solemn, and touching. We startle and groan at this scene of miseries, in which the whole race of mankind is perpetually involved, and of some of which we ourselves must one day be victims.

Sight so deform, what heart of rock could long
Dry-ey'd behold!

To return to the remark. There is a serious turn, an inborn sedateness in the mind, which renders images of terror grateful and engaging. Agreeable sensations are not only produced by bright and lively objects, but sometimes by such as are gloomy and solemn. It is not the blue sky, the cheerful sun-shine, or the smiling landskip,

*Hesiod. in Scuto Herc. v. 267.

that