LECTURE XX.

Of the SUBLIME.

REAT objects please us for the fame reason that new objects

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do, viz. by the exercise they give to our faculties. The mind, as was observed before, conforming and adapting itself to the objects to which its attention is engaged, muft, as it were, enlarge itself, to conceive a great object. This requires a confiderable effort of the imagination, which is also attended with a pleafing, though perhaps not a distinct and explicit consciousness of the ftrength and extent of our own powers.

As the ideas of great and little are confeffedly relative, and have no existence but what they derive from a comparison with other ideas; hence, in all fublime conceptions, there is a kind of fecret retrospect to preceding ideas and ftates of mind. The fublime, therefore, of all the fpecies of excellence in composition, requires the most to be intermixed with ideas of an intermediate nature; as thefe contribute not a little, by their contraft, to raise and aggrandize ideas which are of a rank fuperior to themselves. Whenever any object, how great foever, becomes familiar to the mind, and its relations to other objects is no longer attended to, the fublime vanishes. Milton's battle of the angels, after the prelude to the engagement, would have been read with no greater

emotions

emotions than are excited by the history of a common battle, had not the poet perpetually reinforced his fublime, as it were, by introducing frequent comparisons of thofe fuperior beings, and their actions, with human combatants and human efforts. It is plainly by means of comparison that Horace gives us so sublime an idea of the unconquerable firmness of Cato:

Et cuncta terrarum fuba&ta,

Preter atrocem animum Catonis.

For the fame reafon a well-conducted climax is extremely favourable to the fublime. In this form of a fentence, each fubfequent idea is compared with the preceding; so that if the former have been represented as large, the latter, which exceeds it, muft appear exceedingly large. The effect of this we fee in that fublime paffage of Shakespeare, inscribed upon his monument in Westminster Abbey:

The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The folemn temples, the great globe itself,
And all which it inherit, fhall diffolve,

And, like the bafelefs fabric of a vifion,

Shall leave no wreck behind.

The intermediate ideas which are introduced to increase the fublime, by means of comparison with the object whose grandeur is to be inhanced by them, ought to be of a fimilar nature; because there is no comparison of things diffimilar. The difference between them fhould be nothing more than that of greater and lefs and even in this cafe, it often happens that the contrast of things between which there is a very great disparity (as will be explained hereafter) produces the burlefque, a fentiment of a quite

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oppofite nature to the fublime. It is not improbable but that many of Mr. Pope's readers may affix ludicrous ideas to the following lines, which, in his own conception, and that of his more philofophical readers, were very fublime.

Who fees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish, or a fparrow fall;

Atoms, or systems, into ruin hurl'd;

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

ESSAY ON MAN. Ep. I.

Sparrows, atoms, and bubbles, do not make the fame figure in the eye of the generality of mankind, that they do in that of a philofopher.

It follows from these principles, that no conception can be sublime which is not fimple. If any scene present a crowd of separate objects, the mind views them in fucceffion, though in a very quick and rapid one, and exerts no extraordinary effort to conceive and comprehend any of them. However, an idea that doth confift of parts may appear fublime, if the parts of which it confifts be not attended to, but the aggregate of them all be perceived as one idea. This is easily illuftrated by the ideas of numbers. Very large numbers, as a thousand, ten thousand, and a hundred thousand, present great and sublime ideas upon the first naming of them, which continue fo long as we endeavour to furvey the whole of them at once, without attempting to refolve them into their component parts; but the arithmetician, who is used to compose and decompofe the largest numbers, is conscious of no fublime idea, even when he is performing the operations of addition and multiplication upon them.

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Objects of the first rank in point of magnitude, and which chiefly constitute the fublime of defcription, are large rivers, high mountains, and extenfive plains; the ocean, the clouds, the heavens, and infinite space; alfo ftorms, thunder, lightning, volcanos, and earthquakes, in nature; and palaces, temples, pyramids, cities, &c. in the works of men. See a fine enumeration of those scenes of nature, which contribute the most to the fublime, in Akenfide upon this fubject:

Who but rather turns

To heaven's broad fire his unconstrained view,
Than to the glimmering of a waxen flame?
Who that, from Alpine heights, his lab'ring eye

Shoots round the wide horizon, to furvey

The Nile or Ganges roll his wasteful tide,

Thro' mountains, plains, thro' empires black with fhade,
And continents of fand, will turn his gaze

To mark the windings of a fcanty rill

That murmurs at his feet? &c.

PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION, Lib. I.

But the account here given of the fublime, by no means confines it to the ideas of objects which have fenfible and corporeal magnitude. Sentiments and paffions are equally capable of it, if they relate to great objects, fuppofe extensive views of things, require a great effort of the mind to conceive them, and produce great effects. Fortitude, magnanimity, generosity, patriotism, and univerfal benevolence, ftrike the mind with the idea of the fublime. We are confcious that it requires a great effort to exert them; and in all cafes when the mind is conscious of a fimilar exertion of its faculties, it refers its fenfations to the fame class.

If the virtues above mentioned were more common, the idea of them would not be fo fublime.

Who that confiders the fentiments of Diomedes, when he prays to Jupiter to give him day, and then deftroy him; the answer of Alexander to Parmenio (who had told him that he would accept the offers of Darius, if he were Alexander) And fo would I, if I were Parmenio; and much more the prayer of our Saviour upon the cross, in behalf of his perfecutors, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do: who, I say, that attends to these sentiments, can entertain a doubt that they produce feelings fimilar to those which we receive from the view of grand and elevated objects? Or a perfon need only to read the following paffage from Dr. Akenfide, to be convinced that there is a true fublime in fentiment:

Say why was man fo eminently raised

Above the vaft creation? Why advanced
Thro' life and death to dart his piercing eye,
With thoughts beyond the limits of his frame;
But that th' Omnipotent might fend him forth,
In fight of mortal and immortal powers,
As on a boundless theatre, to run

The great career of juftice, to exalt

His gen'rous aim to all diviner deeds? &c.

There is no furer method of discovering those fenfations and ideas, which are apprehended to be analogous by mankind in general, than by obferving the analogies of words in various languages; for the one will correfpond to the other. As mankind, when the bulk of any language was invented, were not in a fitu- . ation to invent fuperfluous terms, we may naturally conclude they would content themselves with the fame term when there was a X 2.

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