Imatges de pàgina
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CHAP. V.

lody of an actor's voice, is a very small part, in- PART I. deed, of the pleasure, which we receive from the representation of a fine drama: but, nevertheless, Of Sight. if a single note of the voice be absolutely cracked and out of tune, so as to offend and disgust the ear, it will completely destroy the effect of the most skilful acting, and render all the sublimity and pathos of the finest tragedy ludi

crous.

PART II.

OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.

PART II.

CHAP. I.

CHAPTER I,

OF KNOWLEDGE OR IMPROVED PERCEPTION.

1. THE faculty of improved or artificial perception, being acquired in the manner stated in Of improved the concluding sections of the last Chapter of Perception. the first Part, continues to improve through the

subsequent stages of our lives as long as our minds retain their vigour; and becomes so far independent of the organs of sense, from which it is derived, and through which it continues to be exercised, that it often exists in its highest state of perfection, when those organs are enfeebled by age, and verging to decay. A musician can tune an instrument, after his hearing has become defective, more accurately than a person with the nicest ear, who has not been used to discriminate sounds; and a vintner, who has been in the constant habit of tasting wine, and attending to its flavour, though his organs be

blunted by age and vitiated by intemperance, PART II. will distinguish the genuine juice of the grape,

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or point out the modes and degrees of its adul- Of improved Perception. teration, with more certainty and precision than an unexperienced person, who enjoys the utmost sensibility of palate; but who never having accustomed himself to discriminate the impressions upon his organs and observe them separately; nor having any analogous ideas pre-existing in his mind, by which to measure and examine them, considers every compound sensation collectively and alone; and consequently, if this irritation be not very harsh and discordant, finds it pleasant, whatever may have been the causes, which excited it.

2. All refinement of taste, therefore, in the liberal arts, arises, in the first instance, from this faculty of improved perception: for painting, sculpture, music, and poetry are all in their principles, as Aristotle has observed, imitative arts* whence the only pleasures, which the ignorant and unexperienced receive from them, except those of sensation and mental sympathy before explained, are derived from mere imitation.

3. Man, as the same great philosopher observes, is by nature an imitative animal†; and,

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PART II. as those faculties of his mind, by which he has risen so much above the rest of the creation, are Of improved owing in a great degree, to one individual imiPerception. tating another, and still adding something to

CHAP. I.

what he had acquired, imitation is both naturally and habitually pleasing to him*. Hence there is no effort of painting or sculpture so rude, no composition in music or poetry so artless, as not to delight those, who have known no better ; and, perhaps, the pleasures, which the ignorant feel from mere imitation, when it has arrived at any degree of exactitude, are more keen and vivid, though less exquisite and exalted than those which the learned in art receive from its noblest productions: at least, I have seen more delight expressed at a piece of wax-work, or a painting of a mackerel upon a deal board, or a pheasant on a table, than I ever observed to be produced by the Apollo of the Belvidere or the Transfiguration of Raphael. It is true that the vulgar express their feelings more boisterously and impetuously than the learned; but it is also true that the feelings of nature have universally more of rapture in them than those which are excited through the medium of science.

4. These feelings of nature, however, are of

* Ibid. c. vi,

CHAP. 1.

short duration for when the novelty of the first PART II. impression is over, and the interest of curiosity and surprise has subsided, mere imitation of Of improved Perception. common objects begins to appear trifling and insipid; and men look for, in imitative art, something of character and expression, which may awaken sympathy, excite new ideas, or expand and elevate those already formed.

5. To produce this requires a knowledge of mind, as well as of body; and of the interior, as well as exterior construction of the human frame, or of whatever else be the object of imitation; whence art becomes engrafted upon science; and as all the exertions of human skill and ingenuity are indefinitely progressive, and never stop at the point, which they originally aimed at, this art of science or science of art has been extended, particularly in painting and music, to the production of excellencies, which are neither of imitation nor expression; but which peculiarly belong to technical skill, and which can only be relished or perceived by those, who have acquired a certain degree of knowledge in those arts. Such are, in general, the compositions of Bravura, as they are called, in music; and such, in painting, are the works of the great Venetian painters; whose style of imitation is any thing but exact; whose expression is never

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