with the ftrangeness of its appearance: It ferves us for a kind of refreshment, and takes off from that fatiety we are apt to complain of in our ufual and ordinary entertainments. It is this that beftows charms on a monster, and makes even the imperfections of nature please us. It is this that recommends variety, where the mind is every inftant called off to fomething new, and the attention not suffered to dwell too long, and wafte itself on any particular object. It is this, likewife, that improves what is great or beautiful, and makes it afford the mind a double entertainment. Groves, fields, and meadows, are at any season of the year pleasant to look upon, but never so much as in the opening of the fpring, when they are all new and fresh, with their firft glofs upon them, and not yet too much accustomed and familiar to the eye. For this reafon there is nothing that more enlivens a profpect than rivers, jetteaus, or falls of water, where the scene is perpetually shifting, and entertaining the fight every moment with fomething that is new. We are quickly tired with looking upon hills and valleys, where every thing continues fixt and fettled in the fame place and pofture, but find our thoughts a little agitated and relieved at the fight of fuch objects as are ever in motion, and fliding away from beneath the eye of the beholder.

But there is nothing that makes its way more directly to the foul than beauty, which immediately diffufes a fecret fatisfaction and complacency through the imagination, and gives a finishing to any thing that is great or uncommon. The very firft difcovery of it ftrikes the mind with an inward joy, and spreads a chearfulness and delight through all its faculties. There is not perhaps any real beauty or deformity more in one piece of matter than another, because we might have been fo made, that whatsoever now appears lothfom to us, might have fhewn itself agreeable; but we find by experience that there are several modifications of matter which the mind, without any previous confideration, pronounces at firft fight beautiful or deformed. Thus we fee that every different fpecies of fenfible creatures has its different notions of beauty, and that each of them is moft affected with the beauties of its own kind. This is no where

more

more remarkable than in birds of the fame fhape and proportion, where we often fee the mate determined in his courtship by the fingle grain or tincture of a feather, and never discovering any charins but in the colour of its fpecies.

Seit thalamo fervare fidem, fandtafque veretur
Connubii leges; non illum in pectore candor
Sollicitat niveus; neque pravum accendit amorem
Splendida lanugo, vel bonefta in vertice crista,
Purpureufve nitor pennarum; aft agmina latè
Faminea explorat cautus, maculafque requirit
Cognatas, paribufque interlita corpora guttis:
Ni faceret, pictis fylvam circum undique monftris
Confufam afpiceres vulgò, partufque biformes,
Et genus ambiguum, veneris monumenta nefanda.
Hinc merula in nigro se oblestat nigramarito,
Hinc focium lafciva petit philomela canorum,
Agnofcitque pares fonitus, hinc noctua tetram
Canitiem alarum, & glaucos miratur ocellos.
Nempe fibi femper conftat, crescitque quotannis
Lucida progenies, caftos confeffa parentes ;.
Dum virides inter faltus lucofque fononos
Vere nouo exultat, plumafque decora juventus
Explicat ad folem, patriifque coloribus ardet.

The feather'd husband, to his partner true,
Preferves connubial rites inviolate.

With cold indifference every charm he fees,
The milky whiteness of the ftately neck,
The fhining down, proud creft, and purple wings
But cautious with a fearching eye explores
The female tribes, his proper mate to find,
With kindred colours mark'd: Did he not fo,
The grove with painted monsters wou'd abound,
Th' ambiguous product of unnatural love.
The black-bird hence felects her footy spouse;
The nightingale her mufical compeer,

Lur'd by the well-known voice: the bird of night,.
Smit with his dusky wings and greenish eyes,
Wooes his dun paramour. The beauteous race
Speak the chafte loves of their progenitors;,
When, by the spring invited, they exult.

In woods and fields, and to the fun unfold

Their plumes, that with paternal colours glow.

There is a fecond kind of beauty that we find in the feveral products of art and nature, which does not work in the imagination with that warmth and violence as the beauty that appears in our proper fpecies, but is apt however to raise in us a fecret delight, and a kind of fondness for the places or objects in which we discover it. This confifts either in the gaiety or variety of colours, in the fymmetry and proportion of parts, in the arrangement and difpofition of bodies, or in a juft mixture and concurrence of all together. Among these several kinds of beauty the eye takes moft delight in colours. We no where meet with a more glorious or pleafing show in nature, than what appears in the heavens at the rifing and fetting of the fun, which is wholly made up of thole differen ftains of light that fhew themselves in clouds of a different fituation. For this reafon we find the poets, who are always addreffing themfelves to the imagination, borrowing more of their epithets from colours than from any other topic.

As the fancy delights in every thing that is great, ftrange or beautiful, and is ftill more pleafed the more it finds of these perfections in the fame object, fo it is ca pable of receiving a new fatisfaction by the affiftance of another fenfe. Thus any continued found, as the mufic of birds, or a fall of water, awakens every moment the mind of the beholder, and makes him more attentive to the feveral beauties of the place that lie before him. Thus if there arifes a fragrancy of fmells or perfumes, they heighten the pleasures of the imagination, and make even the colours and verdure of the landskip ap. pear more agreeable; for the ideas of both fenfes recommend each other, and are pleafanter together, than when they enter the mind feparately: As the different colours of a picture, when they are well difpofed, fet off one another, and receive an additional beauty from the advantage of their fituation.

Tuesdav,

2

N° 413

Tuesday, June 24.

Caufa latet, vis eft notiffima

Ovid. Met. 1. 4.

V. 207.

ADDISON.

The cause is fecret, but th' effect is known.

TH

HOUGH in yesterday's paper we confidered how every thing that is great, new, or beautiful, is apt to affect the imagination with pleasure, we muft own that it is impoffible for us to affign the neceffary caufe of this pleasure, because we know neither the nature of an idea, nor the fubftance of a human foul, which might help us to discover the conformity or difagreeablenefs of the one to the other; and therefore, for want of fuch a light, all that we can do in fpeculations of this kind, is to reflect on thofe operations of the foul that are most agreeable, and to range, under their per heads, what is pleafing or difpleafing to the mind, without being able to trace out the feveral neceffary and efficient caufes from whence the pleasure or difpleasure arifes.

pro

Final caufes lie more bare and open to our obfervation, as there are often a greater variety that belong to the fame effect; and thefe, tho' they are not altogether fo fatisfactory, are generally more useful than the other, as they, give us greater occafion of admiring the goodness and wifdom of the first contriver.

One of the final caufes of our delight in any thing that is great, may be this. The Supreme Author of our Being has fo formed the foul of man, that nothing but himself can be its laft, adequate, and proper happiness. Because, therefore, a great part of our happinefs muit arife from the contemplation of his being, that he might give our fouls a juft relifh of fuch a contemplation, he has made them naturally delight in the apprehenfion of what is great or unlimited. Our admiration, which is a

very pleafing motion of the mind, immediately rifes at the confideration of any object that takes up a great deal of room in the fancy, and, by confequence, will improve into the higheft pitch of aftonishment and devotion when we contemplate his nature, that is neither circumfcribed by time nor place, nor to be comprehend.d by the largest capacity of a created being.

He has annexed a fecret pleasure to the idea of any thing that is new or uncommon, that he might encourage us in the purfuit after knowledge, and engage us to fearch into the wonders of his creation; for every new idea brings fuch a pleasure along with it as rewards any pains we have taken in its acquifition, and confequently ferves as a motive to put us upon fresh discoveries.

He has made every thing that is beautiful in our own Species pleafant, that all creatures might be tempted to multiply their kind, and fill the world with inhabitants; for 'tis very remarkable that wherever Nature is croft in the production of a monfter (the refult of any unnatural mixture) the breed is incapable of propagating its likenefs, and of founding a new order of creatures; fo that unless all animals were allured by the beauty of their own fpecies, generation would be at an end, and the earth unpeopled.

In the laft place, he has made every thing that is beautiful in all other objects pleasant, or rather has made fo many objects appear beautiful, that he might render the whole creation more gay and delightful. He has given almost every thing about us the power of raising an agreeable idea in the imagination: So that it is impoffible for us to behold his works with coldness or indifference, and to furvey fo many beauties without a fecret fatisfaction and complacency. Things would make but a poor appearance to the eye, if we faw them only in their proper figures and motions: And what reason can we affign for their exciting in us many of thofe ideas which are different from any thing that exifts in the objects themselves, (for fuch are light and colours) were it not to add fupernumerary ornaments to the universe, and make it more agreeable to the imagination? We are every where entertained with pleafing fhows and apparitions, we difcover imaginary glories in the Heavens,