arises wholly from the view of that admirable art with which so many various and complicated parts are made to unite for one purpose.

421. This sense of beauty in fitness and design, has an extensive influence over many of our ideas. It is the foundation of the beauty which we discover in the proportion of doors, windows, arches, pillars, and all the orders of archi

tecture.

Illus. 1. Let the ornaments of a building be ever so fine and elegant in themselves, yet if they interfere with this sense of fitness and design, they lose their beauty, and hurt the eye like disagreeable objects.

2. Twisted columns, for instance, are undoubtedly ornamental; but as they have an appearance of weakness, they always displease when they are made use of to support any part of a building that is massy, and that seems to require a more substantial prop.

3. We cannot look upon any work whatever, without being led, by a natural association of ideas, to think of its end and design, and of course to examine the propriety of its parts, in relation to this design and end. When their propriety is clearly discerned, the work seems always to have some beauty; but when there is a total want of propriety, it never fails of appearing deformed.

4. Our sense of fitness and design, therefore, is so powerful, and holds so high a rank among our perceptions, as to regulate in a great measure, our other ideas of beauty. This observation is of the utmost importance, to all who study composition. For in an epic poem, a history, an oration, or any work of genius, we always require, as we do in other works, a fitness, or adjustment of means, to the end which the author is supposed to have in view. Let his descriptions be ever so rich, or his figures ever so elegant, yet if they are out of place, if they are not proper parts of that whole, if they suit not the main design, they lose all their beauty; nay, from beauties they are converted into deformities. Such power has our sense of fitness and congruity, to produce a total transformation of an object whose appearance otherwise would have been beautiful.

422. After having mentioned so many various species of beauty, it now only remains to take notice of beauty, as it is applied to writing or discourse; a term commonly used in a sense altogether loose and undetermined. For it is applied to all that pleases, either in style or in sentiment, from whatever principle that pleasure flows; and a beautiful poem or oration means, in common language, no other than a good one, or one well composed.

Illus. 1. In this sense, it is plain, the word is altogether indefinite, and points at no particular species or kind of beauty.

2. There is, however, another sense, somewhat more definite, in which beauty of writing characterises a particular manner; when it is used to signify a certain grace and amenity, in the turn either of style or sentiment, for which some authors have been peculiarly distinguished.

3. In this sense, it denotes a manner neither remarkably sublime, nor vehemently passionate, nor uncommonly sparkling; but such as

raises in the reader an emotion of the gentle placid kind, similar to what is raised by the contemplation of beautiful objects in nature; which neither lifts the mind very high, nor agitates it very much, but diffuses over the imagination an agreeable and pleasing serenity.

Scholia 1. Addison is a writer altogether of this character; and is one of the most proper and precise examples that can be given of it. Fenelon, the author of the Adventures of Telemachus, may be given as another example. Virgil too, though very capable of rising on occasions into the sublime, yet, in his general manner, is distinguished by the character of beauty and grace, rather than of sublimity. Among orators, Cicero has more of the beautiful than Demosthenes, whose genius led him wholly towards vehemence and strength.

2. This much it is sufficient to have said upon the subject of beauty. We have traced it through a variety of forms; because next to sublimity, it is the most copious source of the pleasures of taste; and because the consideration of the different appearances, and principles of beauty, tends to the improvement of taste in many subjects.

3. But it is not only by appearing under the forms of sublime or beautiful, that objects delight the imagination. From several other principles, also, they derive their power of giving it pleasure.

423. NOVELTY, for instance, has been mentioned by Addison, by Kames, and by every writer on this subject. An object that has no merit to recommend it, except its being uncommon or new, by means of this quality alone, produces in the mind a vivid and an agreeable emotion. Hence that passion of curiosity, which prevails so generally among

mankind.

Illus. Objects and ideas which have been long familiar, make too faint an impression to give an agreeable exercise to our faculties. New and strange objects rouse the mind from its dormant state, by giving it a quick and pleasing impulse. Hence, in a great measure, the entertainment afforded us by fiction and romance. The emotion raised by novelty is of a more lively and pungent nature than that produced by beauty; but much shorter in its continuance. For if the object have in itself no charms to hold our attention, the shining gloss thrown upon it by novelty soon wears off.

*

424. Besides novelty, imitation is another source of pleasure to taste. This gives rise to what are termed, the secondary pleasures of imagination; which form, doubtless, a very extensive class.

Illus. For all imitation affords some pleasure; not only the imitation of beautiful or great objects, by recalling the original ideas of beauty or grandeur which such objects themselves exhibited; but even objects which have neither beauty nor grandeur, nay, some which are terrible or deformed, please us in a secondary or represented view.

425. The pleasures of melody and harmony belong also to taste. There is no agreeable sensation we receive either from beauty or sublimity, but what is capable of being heightened by the power of musical sound. Hence the de

light of poetical numbers; and even of the more concealed and looser measures of prose.

426. Wit, humour, and ridicule, likewise open a variety to pleasures of taste, quite distinct from any that we have yet considered.

427. WIT is a quality of certain thoughts and expressions; the term is never applied to an action, nor to a passion; far less to an external object.*

Illus. 1. Wit is a term appropriated to such thoughts and expressions as are ludicrous, and also occasion some degree of surprise by their singularity.

2. Wit also, in a figurative sense, expresses a talent for inventing ludicrous thoughts or expressions: we say commonly a witty man, or a man of wit. Hudibras is a man of wit; Falstaff is a witty man: Swift is both.

3. Wit, in its proper sense, as explained above, is distinguishable into two kinds; wit in the thought, and wit in the words or expressions. 4. Again wit in the thought, is of two kinds; ludicrous images, and ludicrous combinations, that have little or no natural relation.

5. Ludicrous images, which surprise by their singularity, are fabricated by the imagination; and ludicrous combinations are such an assemblage of ideas or of things, as by distant and fanciful relations surprise, because they are unexpected.

428. HUMOUR. Nothing just or proper is denominated humour; nor any singularity of character, words, or actions that is valued or respected.

Illus. 1. When we attend to the character of an humourist, we find that it arises from circumstances both risible and improper, and therefore that it lessens the man in our esteem, and makes him in some measure ridiculous.

2. A ludicrous writer is one who insists upon ludicrous subjects with the professed purpose to make his readers laugh; a writer of humour is one, who, affecting to be grave and serious, paints his subjects in such colours as to provoke mirth and laughter.

Example. Swift and Fontaine were humourists in character, and their writings are full of humour. Arbuthnot outdoes them in drollery and humourous painting; but he who should say that Addison was an humourist in character, would be suspected of mistaking horse chesnuts for chesnut horses.

429. RIDICULE. A visible object produceth an emotion of laughter merely, a ridiculous object is improper as well as risible, and produceth a mixed emotion, which is vented by a laugh of derision or scorn.t

Obs. Burlesque is a great engine of ridicule: it is distinguishable into the burlesque that excites laughter merely, and the burlesque that provokes derision or ridicule.

Examples. Virgil Travestie, and the Lutrin, are compositions which

*Kames' Essays, chap. 13. vol. I.

† Arist. Poet. ch. 5. Cicero de Oratore, I. 2. Quinctilian, lib. 6. cap. 3.

come under this article. The Rape of the Lock is not strictly burlesque, but an heroic-comical poem. Addison's Spectator* on the Fan is extremely gay and ludicrous.

:

Scholium. This singular advantage writing and discourse possess, that, in every point of view, they encompass a large and rich field, in respect to the pleasures of taste; and have power to exhibit, in great perfection, not a single set of objects only, but almost the whole of those which give pleasure to taste and imagination whether that pleasure arise from sublimity, from beauty in its different forms, from design and art, from moral sentiment, from novelty, from harmony, from wit, humour, and ridicule. To whichsoever of these the peculiar bent of a person's taste lies, from some writer or other he has it always in his power to receive the gratification of his taste.

430. The high power which eloquence and poetry possess, of supplying taste and imagination with an extensive circle of pleasures, they derive altogether from their having a greater capacity of imitation and description than is possessed by any other art.

Illus. 1. Of all the means which human ingenuity has contrived for recalling the images of real objects, and awakening, by representation, similar emotions to those which are raised by the original, none is so full and extensive as that which is executed by words and writing. Through the assistance of this happy invention, there is nothing, either in the natural or in the moral world that cannot be represented and set before the mind, in colours very strong and lively.

Corol. Hence it is usual among critical writers to speak of discourse as the chief of all the imitative or mimical arts; they compare it with painting and with sculpture, and in many respects prefer it justly before them.

Illus. 2. Imitation is performed by means of something that has a natural likeness and resemblance to the thing imitated; and of consequence is understood by all: statues and pictures, are examples of likenesses.

2. Description, again, is the raising in the mind the conception of an object by means of some arbitrary or instituted symbols, understood only by those who agree in the institution of them; such are words and writing.

3. Words, though copies, (Art. 432.) have no natural resemblance to the ideas or objects which they are employed to signify; but a statue or picture has a natural likeness to the original. And therefore imitation and description differ considerably in their nature from each other.

431. As far, indeed, as the poet introduces into his work persons actually speaking; and, by the words which he puts into their mouths, represents the discourse which they might be supposed to hold; so far his art may more accurately be called imitative; and this is the case in all dramatic composition. But, in narrative or descriptive works, it can with no propriety be called so.

* No. 102.

Illus. 1. Who, for instance, would call Virgil's description of a tem pest, in the first Æneid, an imitation of a storm? If we heard of the imitation of a battle we might naturally think of some sham-fight, or representation of a battle on the stage, but could never apprehend that it meant one of Homer's descriptions in the Iliad.

2. But imitation and description agree in their principal effect, of recalling, by external signs, the ideas of things which they do not see. But though in this they coincide, yet it should not be forgotten, that the terms themselves are not synonymous; that they import different means of effecting the same end; and of course make different impressions on the mind.

Scholium. Whether we consider poetry in particular, and discourse in general, as imitative or descriptive; it is evident, that their whole power in recalling the impressions of real objects, is derived from the significancy, the choice and arrangement of words. Their excellency flows altogether from these sources. Having shewn how the source may be preserved pure, we shall, in the next book, enter upon style. and eloquence in their most extensive signification.