Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

of

he aims; in the latter, he may expect the more serious inconvenience of contracting a fantastic singularity of opinions and manners, or of impairing his relish for the primary beauties which nature exhibits.

A long and exclusive familiarity with fictitious narratives (it has been often observed) has a tendency to weaken the interest we take in the ordinary business of the world; and the slightest attempt to fashion the manners after such models as they supply, never fails to appear ludicrous in the extreme. The case is nearly similar with the painter who applies, to the beauties of a rich and varied prospect, the rules of his own limited art; or who, in the midst of such a scene, loses its general effect, in the contemplation of some accidental combination of circumstances suited to his canvas. But on this point I have already enlarged at sufficient length.

[blocks in formation]

I intended to have prosecuted still farther, the subject of this Essay, and to have added to it some supplemental observations on the import of the word Beauty, when applied to Virtue; to Philosophical Theories; to Geometrical Propositions, and to some other classes of Scientific Discoveries; in all of which instances, the principles already stated will be found to afford an easy explanation of various apparent anomalies in the use of the expression. Enough, however, has been already said, for the purposes I have in view in the sequel of this volume; and I shall, therefore, reserve the topics now mentioned for future discussion.

ESSAY SECOND.

ON THE SUBLIME.

PREFACE.

My thoughts were first turned particularly to this subject, by the opposite judgments which have been lately pronounced on the merits of Mr. Burke's theory of the Sublime, by two writers of great originality, acuteness, and taste,-Mr. Price and Mr. Knight. The former of these gentlemen having done me the honour, in spring 1808, to allow me the perusal of a very valuable supple. ment to what he has already published in defence of the doctrines of his late illustrious friend, I was induced to commit to writing, a few hasty and unconnected notes, on some incidental points to which his manuscript had attracted my attention. It was upon this occasion, that the leading idea occurred to me which runs through the whole of the following Essay; and which I had the boldness to communicate to Mr. Price, in the very crude form in which it at first presented itself. At that period, I had little or no intention to prosecute it any farther; but having afterwards recollected its close analogy to a principle which forms the basis of the foregoing speculations concerning the Beautiful, I resolved to resume the consideration of it more deliberately, as soon as my necessary engagements should permit; in the hope that the two discussions might

reflect additional lights on each other. In this I flatter myself that I have not been altogether disappointed; and accordingly, I have placed them together, in arranging the materials of this volume; although without any direct references in either to the parallel train of thought pursued in the other. An attentive reader will be able easily to collect for himself the general results to which they lead.

The Essay on the Beautiful has been lying by me, much in the same state in which it now appears, for several years. The greater part of that on the Sublime, (with the exception of a few pages, which I have copied very nearly from the notes transmitted to Mr. Price) was written last summer, during a short residence in a distant part of the country, where I had no opportunity whatever of consulting books. I mention this merely to account for the selection of my illustrations, many of which, I am sensible, may appear too hackneyed to be introduced into a disquisition, which it would have been desirable to enliven and adorn by examples possessing something more of the zest of novelty and variety. At first, I intended to have corrected this fault, as far as I was able, in transcribing my papers for the press; but, on more mature reflection, it struck me forcibly, that the quotations which had offered themselves spontaneously to my memory, while engaged in the consideration of general principles, were likely from the very circumstance of their triteness, to possess some important advantages over any that I could substitute in their place. They shew, at least, by their familiarity to every ear, that I have not gone far out of my way, in quest of instances to sup

port a preconceived hypothesis; and afford a presumption, that the conclusions to which I have been led, are the natu ral result of impressions and associations not confined to a small number of individuals. Whether indolence may not have contributed somewhat to fortify me in these opinions, it is now too late for me to consider.

ON THE SUBLIME.

CHAPTER FIRST.

OF SUBLIMITY, IN THE LITERAL SENSE OF THE WORD.

AMONG the writers who have hitherto attempted to ascertain the nature of the Sublime, it has been very generally, if not universally taken for granted, that there must exist some common quality in all the various objects characterized by this common epithet. In their researches, however, concerning the essential constituent of Sublimity, the conclusions to which they have been led are so widely different from each other, that one would scarcely suppose, on a superficial view, they could possibly relate to the same class of phenomena;-a circumstance the more remarkable, that, in the statement of these phenomena, philosophical critics are, with a few trifling exceptions, unanimously agreed.

Mr. Burke seems disposed to think, that the essence of the sublime is the terrible, operating either openly or more latently.* Helvetius has adopted the same general

*In one passage, he asserts this, in very unqualified terms: "Ter"ror is, in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the "ruling principle of the sublime."-(Part ii. Sect. 2.)

In other instances he expresses himself more guardedly; speaking

« ForrigeFortsæt »