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of art, whether it appear in painting or ftatuary, in the great works of architecture which are in their prefent glory, or in the ruins of those which flourished in former ages.

Such advantages as thefe help to open a man's thoughts, and to enlarge his imagination, and will therefore have their influence on all kinds of writing, if the author knows how to make right ufe of them

And

among thofe of the learned languages who excel in this talent, the most perfect in their feveral kinds are perhaps Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. The firft ftrikes the imagination wonderfully with what is great, the fecond with what is beautiful, and the laft with what is ftrange. Reading the Iliad is like travelling through a country uninhabited, where the fancy is entertained with a thoufand favage prospects of vaft deferts, wide uncultivated marthes, huge forefts, mifhapen rocks and precipices.. On the contrary, the Æneid is like a well ordered garden, where it is impoffible to find out any part unadorned, or to caft our eyes upon a fingle spot, that does not produce fome beautiful plant or flower. But when we are in the Metamorphofis we are walking on enchanted ground, and fee nothing but fcenes of magic lying round us.

Homer is in his province, when, he is defcribing a battle or a multitude, a hero or a god. Virgil is never better pleased, than when he is in his Elyfium, or copying out an entertaining picture. Homer's epithets generally mark out what is great. Virgil's what is agreeable. Nothing can be more magnificent than the figure Jupiter makes in the first Illiad, nor more charming than that of Venus in the first Æneid.

Ἠ, καὶ κυανέησιν ἐπ' ὀφρύσι νοῦσε Κρονίων,
̓Αμβρό και δ' άρα χαῖται ἐπεῤῥώσαντο ανακλ
Κρατὸς ἀπ' αθανατοιο· μέγαν δ ̓ ἐλέλιξεν Ὄλυμπον.

Iliad lib. I. v. 528.

He fpoke, and awful bends his fable brows;
Shakes his ambrofial curls, and gives the nod,
The ftamp of fate, and fanction of the God:
High heav'n with trembling the dread fignal took,
And all Olympus to the center fhook.

РОР Б.

Dingi

Dixit & avertens rofeâ cervice refulfit : Ambrofiæque come divinum vertice odorem Spiravere: Pedes veftis defluxit ad imos, Et vera incefu patuit Dea

En 1. v. 4c6.

Thus having faid, fhe turn'd and made appear Her neck refulgent, and difhevel`d hair;

Which, flowing from her fhoulders reach'd the ground,

And widely fpread ambrofial fcents around :

In length.of train defcends her sweeping gown,
And by her graceful walk the queen of Love is known.
DRYDEN,

Homer's perfons are most of them godlike and terrible; Virgil has fcarce admitted any into his poem, who are not beautiful, and has taken particular care to make his hero fo.

lumenque juvente

Purpureum, et lætos oculis afflavit honores.

Æn. 1. v. 59c

And gave his rolling eyes a fparkling grace,
And breath'd a youthful vigour on his face.

DRYDEN.

In a word, Hemer fills his readers with fublime ideas, and, 1 believe, has raised the imagination of all the good poets that have come after him. I fhall only inftance Horace, who immediately takes fire at the firft hint of any paffage in the Iliad or Odyffey, and always riles above himself, when he has Homer in his view. Virgil has drawn together, into his Eneid, all the pleafing scenes his fubject is capable of admitting, and in his Georgics has given us a collection of the most delightful landskips that can be made out of fields and woods, herds of cattle and swarms of bees.

Ovid, in his Metamorphofes, has fhewn us how the imagination may be affected by what is ftrange. He defcribes a miracle in every ftory, and always gives us the fight of fome new creature at the end of it. His art confifts chiefly in well timing his defcription, before the firft fhape is quite worn off, and the new one perfectly finished; fo that he every where entertains us with fome.

thing we never faw before, and fhews monfter after monfter to the end of the Metamorphofis.

If I were to name a poet that is a perfect mafter in all thefe arts of working on the imagination, I think Milton may pafs for one: And if his Paradise Loft falls fhort of the Eneid or Iliad in this refpect, it proceeds rather from the fault of the language in which it is written, than from any defect of genius in the author. So divine a poem in English, is like a itately palace built of brick, where one may fee architecture in as great a perfection as in one of marble, though the materials are of a coarfer nature. But to confider it only as it regards our prefent fubject; what can be conceived greater than the battle of angels, the majefty of Meffiah, the ftature and behaviour of Satan and his peers? What more beautiful than Pandæmonium, paradise, heaven, angels, Adam and Eve? What more strange, than the creation of the world, the feveral metamorphofes of the fallen angels, and the furprising adventures their leader meets with in his search after paradife? No other fubject could have furnished à poet with scenes fo proper to ftrike the imagination, as no other poet could have painted those scenes in more ftrong and lively colours. O

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HE pleasures of thefe fecondary views of the imagination, are of a wider and more univerfal nature than thofe it has when joined with fight s for not only what is great, ftrange or beautiful, but any thing that is difagreeable when look'd upon, pleases us in an apt defcription. Here, therefore, we must in quire a new principle of pleafure, which is nothing elfe

but.

but the action of the mind, which compares the ideas that arife from words, with the ideas that arise from objects themselves; and why this operation of the mind is attended with fo much pleasure, we have before confidered. For this reason therefore, the defcription of a dunghil is pleafing to the imagination, if the image be reprefented to our minds by fuitable expreffions; tho perhaps, this may be more properly called the pleasure of the understanding than of the fancy, because we are not fo much delighted with the image that is contained in the description, as with the aptness of the defcription to excite the image.

But if the defcription of what is little, common, or deformed, be acceptable to the imagination, the defcrip tion of what is great, furprifing, or beautiful, is much more fo; because here we are not only delighted with comparing the reprefentation with the original, but are highly pleased with the original itself. Moft readers, I believe, are more charmed with Milton's defcription of paradife, than of hell; they are both, perhaps, equally perfect in their kind, but in the one the brim ftone and fulphur are not fo refreshing to the imagination, as the beds of flowers and the wilderness of fweets in the other.

There is yet another circumftance which recommends a defcription more than all the reft, and that is if it represents to us fuch objects as are apt to raise a secret ferment in the mind of the reader, and to work, with violence upon his paffions. For, in this cafe, we are at once warmed and enlightened, fo that the pleasure becomes more univerfal, and is feveral ways qualified to entertain us. Thus in painting, it is pleafant to look on the picture of any face, where the resemblance is hit, but the pleasure increases, if it be the picture of a face that is beautiful, and is ftill greater, if the beauty be foftned with an air of melancholy or forrow. The two leading paffions which the more ferious parts of poetry endeavour to ftir up in us, are terror and pity. And here, by the way, one would wonder how it comes to pafs, that fuch paffions as are very unpleasant at all other times, are very agreeable when excited by proper defcriptions, It is not ftrange, that we should take de

light in fuch paffages as are apt to produce, hope, joy, admiration, love, or the like emotions in us, because they never rise in the mind without an inward pleasure which attends them. But how comes it to pafs, that we should take delight in being terrified or dejected by a descrip tion, when we find fo much uneafinefs in the fear or grief which we receive from any other occafion?

If we confider, therefore, the nature of this pleasure, we fhall find that it does not arise fo properly from the defcription of what is terrible, as from the reflection we make on ourselves at the time of reading it. When we look on fuch hideous objects, we are not a little pleafed to think we are in no danger of them. We confider them, at the fame time, as dreadful and harmless; fo that the more frightful appearance they make, the greater is the pleasure we receive from the fenfe of our own fafety. In fhort, we look upon the terrors of a defcription, with the fame curiofity and fatisfaction that we furvey a dead monster.

-Informe cadaver

Protrahitur: nequeunt expleri corda tuendo
Terribiles oculos, vultum, villofaque fetis

Pectora femiferi, atque extinctos faucibus ignes.

Virg. Æn. 8. v. 264.

They drag him from his den.

The wond'ring neighbourhood, with glad furprise,
Beheld his fhagged breaft, his giant fize,

His mouth that flames no more, and his extinguish'd

eyes.

DRYDEN.

It is for the fame reafon that we are delighted with the reflecting upon dangers that are paft, or in looking on a precipice at a distance, which would fill us with a different kind of horror, if we saw it hanging over our heads.

In the like manner, when we read of torments, wounds, deaths, and the like difmal accidents, our pleasure does not flow fo properly from the grief which fuch melancholy defcriptions give us, as from the fecret comparison which we made between ourselves and the

perfon

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