IV.

author whose genius led him eminently to the LECT. Sublime. The whole first and fecond books of Paradife Lost, are continued inftances of it. Take only, for an example, the following noted description of Satan, after his fall, appearing at the head of the infernal hosts:

He, above the rest,

In fhape and gefture proudly eminent,
Stood like a tower: his form had not yet loft
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined; and the excess
Of glory obfcured: As when the fun, new rifen,
Looks through the horizontal mifty air,
Shorn of his beams; or, from behind, the moon,
In dim eclipfe, disastrous twilight sheds

On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. Darken'd fo, yet fhone
Above them all th' Archangel.-

Here concur a variety of fources of the
Sublime The principal object eminently
great; a high fuperior nature, fallen indeed,
but erecting itself against diftrefs; the gran-
deur of the principal object heightened, by
affociating it with fo noble an idea as that of
the fun fuffering an eclipfe; this picture
fhaded with all thofe images of change and
trouble, of darkness and terror, which coin-
cide fo finely with the Sublime emotion; and
the whole expreffed in a ftyle and verfifica-
tion, easy, natural, and fimple, but magnifi-

cent.

I HAVE

G 4

LECT.

IV.

In

I HAVE fpoken of fimplicity and concifenefs, as effential to Sublime Writing. my general defcription of it, I mentioned Strength, as another neceffary requifite. The Strength of defcription arises, in a great meafure, from a fimple concifenefs; but, it suppofes alfo fomething more; namely, a proper choice of circumftances in the description, fo as to exhibit the object in its full and most ftriking point of view. For every object has feveral faces, fo to fpeak, by which it may be presented to us, according to the circumftances with which we furround it; and it will appear eminently Sublime, or not, in proportion as all thefe circumftances are happily chofen, and of a Sublime kind. Here lies the great art of the writer; and indeed, the great difficulty of Sublime defcription. If the defcription be too general, and divested of circumstances, the object appears in a faint light; it makes a feeble impreffion, or no impreffion at all, on the reader. At the fame time, if any trivial or improper circumstances are mingled, the whole is degraded.

A STORM or tempeft, for instance, is a Sublime object in nature. But, to render it Sublime in defcription, it is not enough, either to give us mere general expreffions concerning the violence of the tempeft, or to describe its common, vulgar effects, in over. throwing

IV.

throwing trees and houses. It must be LECT. painted with fuch circumftances as fill the mind with great and awful ideas.

This is very happily done by Virgil, in the following paffage :

Ipfe Pater, media nimborum in nocte, corufcâ
Fulmina molitur dextrâ ; quo maxima motu
Terra tremit; fugere feræ ; & mortalia corda,
Per gentes humilis ftravit pavor: Ille, flagranti
Aut Atho, aut Rhodopen, aut alta Ceraunia telo
Dejicit *.-
GEORG. I.

Every circumstance in this noble defcription
is the production of an imagination heated
and astonished with the grandeur of the
object, If there be any defect, it is in the
words immediately following those I have
quoted; "Ingeminant Auftri, et denfiffimus
"imber;" where the tranfition is made too
haftily, I am afraid, from the preceding

• The Father of the Gods his glory shrouds,
Involv'd in tempefts, and a night of clouds:
And from the middle darkness flashing out,
By fits he deals his fiery bolts about.
Earth feels the motions of her angry God,
Her entrails tremble, and her mountains nod,
And flying beafts in forests seek abode.

Deep horror feizes every human breast;

}

Their pride is humbled, and their fears confeft;
While he, from high his rolling thunders throws,
And fires the mountains with repeated blows;
The rocks are from their old foundations rent;
The winds redouble, and the rains augment. DRYDEN.
Sublime

LECT. Sublime images, to a thick fhower, and the IV. blowing of the fouth wind; and fhews how difficult it frequently is, to descend with grace, without feeming to fall.

THE high importance of the rule which I have been now giving, concerning the proper choice of circumftances, when description is meant to be Sublime, feems to me not to have been fufficiently attended to. It has, however, fuch a foundation in nature, as renders the leaft deflexion from it fatal. When a writer is aiming at the Beautiful only, his defcriptions may have improprieties in them, and yet be beautiful ftill. Some trivial, or misjudged circumftances can be overlooked by the reader; they make only the difference of more or lefs; the gay, or pleafing emotion, which he has raifed, fubfifts ftill. But the cafe is quite different with the Sublime. There, one trifling circumftance, one mean idea, is fufficient to deftroy the whole charm. This is owing to the nature of the emotion aimed at by Sublime defcription, which admits of no mediocrity, and cannot fubfift in a middle ftate; but muft either highly transport us, or, if unfuccefsful in the execution, leave us greatly difgufted, and difpleafed. attempt to rife along with the writer; the imagination is awakened, and put upon the ftretch; but it requires to be fupported; and

We

if

if, in the midst of its effort, you desert it un-
expectedly, down it comes with a painful
fhock. When Milton, in his battle of the
angels, defcribes them as tearing up the
mountains, and throwing them at one another;
there are, in his defcription, as Mr. Addifon
has observed, no circumftances but what are
properly Sublime :

From their foundations loos'ning to and fro,
They plucked the feated hills, with all their load,
Rocks, waters, woods; and by the shaggy tops
Uplifting, bore them in their hands.

Whereas Claudian, in a fragment upon the
war of the giants, has contrived to render this
idea of their throwing the mountains, which
is in itself fo grand, burlefque and ridiculous;
by this fingle circumftance, of one of his
giants with the mountain Ida upon his fhoul-
ders, and a river, which flowed from the
mountain, running down along the giant's
back, as he held it up in that pofture. There
is a description too in Virgil, which, I think,
is cenfurable, though more flightly, in this
refpect. It is that of the burning mountain
Etna; a fubject certainly very proper to be
worked up by a poet into a Sublime defcrip-

tion:

——Horrificis juxta tonat Ætna ruinis. Interdumque atram prorumpit ad æthera nubem, Turbine fumantem piceo, & candente favilla; Attollitque globos flammarum, & fidera lambit.

JV.

ст.