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His tibi me rebus quædam divina voluptas

Percipit, atque horror, quod fic Natura tua vi
Tam manifefa patet ex omni parte retečła.

But the fcripture alone can fupply ideas answerable to the majefty of this fubject. In the fcripture, wherever God is represented as appearing or speaking, every thing terrible in nature is called up to heighten the awe and folemnity of the divine presence. The pfalms, and the prophetical books, are crowded with inftances of this kind. The earth fhook (fays the psalmist), the heavens alfo dropped at the presence of the Lord. And what is remarkable, the painting preferves the fame character, not only when he is fuppofed defcending to take vengeance upon the wicked, but even when he exerts the like plenitude of power in acts of beneficence to mankind. Tremble thou earth! at the prefence of the Lord; at the prefence of the God of Jacob; which turned the rock into flanding water, the flint into a fountain of waters! It were endless to enumerate all the paffages, both in the facred and profane writers, which establish the general fentiment of mankind, concerning the infeparable union of a facred and reverential awe, with our ideas of the divinity. Hence the common maxim, Primos in orbe deos fecit timor. This maxim may be, as I believe it is, falfe with regard to the origin of religion. The maker of the maxim faw how inseparable these ideas were, without confidering that the notion of some great power must be always precedent to our dread of it. But this dread muft neceffarily follow the idea of fuch a power, when it is once excited in the mind. It is on this principle that true religion has, and must have, fo large a mixture of falutary fear; and that falfe religions have generally nothing else but fear to fupport them. Before the Christian religion had, as it were, humanized the idea of the Divinity, and brought

it fomewhat nearer to us, there was very little faid of the love of God. The followers of Plato have fomething of it, and only something; the other writers of pagan antiquity, whether poets or philofophers, nothing at all. And they who confider with what infinite attention, by what a difregard of every perishable object, through what long habits of piety and contemplation it is, any man is able to attain an entire love and devotion to the Deity, will easily perceive, that it is not the first, the most natural, and the most striking effect which proceeds from that idea. Thus we have traced power through its several gradations unto the highest of all, where our imagination is finally loft; and we find terror, quite throughout the progress, its inseparable companion, and growing along with it, as far as we can poffibly trace them. Now, as power is undoubtedly a capital fource of the fublime, this will point out evidently from whence its energy is derived, and to what clafs of ideas we ought to unite it,

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SECT. VI.

PRIVATI o N.

LL general privations are great, because they are allterrible; Vacuity, Darkness, Solitude, and Silence. With what a fire of imagination, yet with what severity of judgment, has Virgil amaffed all thefe circumftances, where he knows that all the images of a tremendous dignity ought to be united, at the mouth of hell! where, before he unlocks the fecrets of the great deep, he seems to be feized with a religious horror, and to retire aftonished at the boldness of his own defign:

Di quibus impérium eft animarum, umbræque filentes!
Et Chaos, et Plegethon! loca nocte filentia late?
Sit mihi fas audita loqui! fit numine veftro
Pandere res alta terra et caligine merfas!
Ibant obfcuri, fola fub nocte, per umbram,
Perque domos Ditis vacuas, et inania regna.
Te fubterraneous gods! whofe awful fway
The gliding ghosts, and filent shades obey;
O Chaos, bear! and Phlegethon profound!
Whofe folemn empire ftretches wide around!
Give me, ye great tremendous powers, to tell
Offcenes and wonders in the depth of hell:
Give me your mighty fecrets to display
From thofe black realms of darkness to the day.

PITT.

Obfcure they went through dreary fhades that led
Along the wafte dominions of the dead.

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GREATNESS of dimenfion is a powerful caufe of the

fublime. This is too evident, and the observation too common, to need any illuftration; it is not fo common to confider in what ways greatness of dimenfion, vastness of extent or quantity, has the most striking effect. For certainly, there are ways, and modes, wherein the fame quantity of extension fhall produce greater effects than it is found.

*Part IV. fect. 9,.

to

to do in others. Extenfion is either in length, height, or depth. Of these the length ftrikes leaft; an hundred yards of even ground will never work fuch an effect as a tower an hundred yards high, or a rock or mountain of that altitude. I am apt to imagine likewife, that height is lefs grand than depth; and that we are more ftruck at looking down from a precipice, than looking up at an object of equal height; but of that I am not very positive. A perpendicular has more force in forming the fublime, than an inclined plain; and the effects of a rugged and broken furface feem ftronger than where it is fmooth and polifhed. It would carry us out of our way to enter in this place into the cause of these appearances; but certain it is they afford a large and fruitful field of speculation. However, it may not be amiss to add to thefe remarks upon magnitude, that, as the great extreme of dimension is fublime, fo the last extreme of littleness is in fome measure fublime likewife; when we attend to the infinite divifibility of matter, when we purfue animal life into these exceffively small, and yet organized beings, that escape the nicest inquifition of the sense, when we push our discoveries yet downward, and confider those creatures so many degrees yet fmaller, and the still diminishing scale of existence, in tracing which the imagination is loft as well as the fense, we become amazed and confounded at the wonders of minuteness; nor can we distinguish in its effect this extreme of littleness from the vaft itself. For divifion must be infinite as well as addition; because the idea of a perfect unity can no more be arrived at, than that of a complete whole, to which nothing may be added.

SECT.

SE C T. VIII.

INFINITY.

ANOTHER fource of the fublime is Infinity; if it does. not rather belong to the laft. Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that fort of delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect, and trueft teft of the fublime. There are scarce any things which can become the objects of our fenfes, that are really and in their own nature infinite. But the eye not being able to perceive the bounds of many things, they feem to be infinite, and they produce the fame effects as if they were really fo. We are deceived in the like manner, if the parts of fome large object are fo continued to any indefinite number, that the imagination meets no check which may hinder its extending them at pleafure.

Whenever we repeat any idea frequently, the mind, by a fort of mechanism, repeats it long after the first cause has ceafed to operate *. After whirling about, when we fit down, the objects about us still seem to whirl. After a long fucceffion of noifes, as the fall of waters, or the beating of forge-hammers, the hammers beat and the water roars in the imagination long after the first founds have ceased to affect it; and they die away at last by gradations which are fcarcely perceptible. If you hold up a strait pole, with your eye to one end, it will feem extended to a length almost incredible †. Place a number of uniform and equidiftant marks on this pole, they will cause the fame deception, and seem multiplied without end. The fenfes, ftrongly affected

* Part IV. fect. 12.

VOL. I.

+ Part IV. fect. 14.

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