tonished 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 .. fublime images, to a thick fhower, and the blowing of the fouth wind; and fhows how difficult it frequently is, to defcend with grace, without feeming to fall.

The high importance of the rule which I have been now giving, concerning the proper choice of circumstances, when defcription 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 fublime. 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 fublime defcription, which admits of no mediocrity, and cannot fubfift in a middle ftate; but muft either highly tranfport us, or, if unfuccefsful in the execution, leave us greatly disgusted, and difpleafed. We attempt to rife along with the writer; the imagination is awakened, and put upon the stretch; but it requires to be fupported; and if, in the midft of its efforts, you defert it unexpectedly, 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 obferved, no, circumftances but what are properly fublime:

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

Whereas Claudian, in a fragment upon the wars: 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 circumstance, of one of his giants with the mountain Ida upon his shoulders, and a river, which flowed from the mountain, running down along the giant's back, as he held it up in that posture.. There is a defcription too in Virgil, which, I think, is cenfurable, though more flightly, in this refpect. It is that of the burning mountain Ætna; a fubject certainly very proper to be worked up by a poet into a fublime defcription:

-Horrificis juxta tonat Etna ruinis..

Interdumque atram prorumpit ad æthera nubem,
Turbine fumantem piceo, & candente favilla ;
Attollitque globos flammarum, & fidera lambit..
Interdum fcopulos, avulfaque vifcera montis
Erigit eructans liquefactaque faxa fub auras
Cum gemitu glomerat, fundoque exæftuat imo*.
ÆN. III. 571.

The port capacious, and fecure from wind,
Is to the foot of thundering Etna join'd:
By turns a pitchy cloud fhe rolls on high,
By turns hot embers from her entrails fly,
And flakes of mounting flames that lick the fky.
Oft from her bowels mafly rocks are thrown.
And fhivered by the force, come piecemeal down.
Oft liquid lakes of burning fulphur flow,
Fed from the fiery fprings that boil below.

DRYDEN.

In this tranflation of Dryden's, the debafing circumstance, to which object in the original, is, with propriety, omitted. Vol. I.

K

Here, after feveral magnificent images, the poet concludes with perfonifying the mountain under this figure, "eructans vifcera cum gemitu," belching up its bowels with a groan; which, by likening the mountain to a fick, or drunk perfon, degrades the majefty of the defcription. It is to no purpose to tell us, that the poet here alludes to the fable of the giant Enceladus lying under mount Etna; and that he fuppofes his motions and tofsings to have occafioned the fiery eruptions. He intended the description of a fublime object; and the natural ideas, raised by a burning mountain, are infinitely more lofty, than the belchings of any giant, how huge foever. The debafing effect of the idea which is here prefented, will appear in a ftronger light, by feeing what figure it makes in a poem of fir Richard Blackmore's, who, through a monftrous perversity of tafte, had chofen this for the capital circumftance in his defcription, and thereby (as dr. Arbuthnot humorously obferves, in his treatise on the art of finking) had reprefented the mountain as in a fit of the cholic.

Ætna, and all the burning mountains find
Their kindled ftores with inbred ftorms of wind
Blown up to rage, and roaring out complain,
As torn with inward gripes and torturing pain ;
Labouring, they caft their dreadful vomit round,
And with their melted bowels fpread the ground.

Such inftances fhow how much the fublime depends upon a juft felection of circumftances; and with how great care every circumftance must be avoided, which, by bordering in the leaft upon the mean, or even upon the gay or the trifling, alters the tone of the emotion."

If it shall now be enquired, what are the proper fources of the fublime? My answer is, that they

are to be looked for every where in nature. It is not by hunting after tropes, and figures, and rhetorical affiftances, that we can expect to produce it. No it ftands clear, for the most part, of thefe laboured refinements of art. It must come unfought, if it come at all; and be the natural offfpring of a strong imagination.

Eft Deus in nobis ; agitante calefcimus illo.

Wherever a great and awful object is prefented in nature, or a very magnanimous and exalted affection of the human mind is difplayed; thence, if you can catch the impreffion ftrongly, and exhibit it warm and glowing, you may draw the fublime. These are its only proper fources. In judging of any ftriking beauty in compofition, whether it is, or is not, to be referred to this clafs, we must attend to the nature of the emotion which it raifes; and only, if it be of that elevating, folemn, and awful kind, which diftinguishes this feeling, we can pronounce it fublime.

From the account which I have given of the na❤ ture of the fublime, it clearly follows, that it is an emotion which can never be long protracted. The mind, by no force of genius, can be kept, for any confiderable time, fo far raised above its common tone; but will, of courfe, relax into its ordinary fituation. Neither are the abilities of any human writer fufficient to furnish a long continuation of uninterrupted fublime ideas. The utmost we can expect is, that this fire of imagination fhould fometimes flash upon us like lightning.from heaven, and then difappear. In Homer and Milton, this effulgence of genius breaks forth more frequently, and with greater luftre than in moft authors. Shakespeare alfo rifes often into the true fublime. But no author whatever is fublime throughout. Some, indeed, there are, who, by

a ftrength and dignity in their conceptions, and a current of high ideas that runs through their whole compofition, preserve the reader's mind always in a tone nearly allied to the fublime; for which reason they may, in a limited fenfe, merit the name of continued fublime writers; and, in this claís, we may justly place Demofthenes and

Plato.

As for what is called the fublime ftyle, it is, for the most part, a very bad one; and has no relation whatever to the real fublime. Perfons are apt to imagine, that magnificent words, accumulated epithets, and a certain fwelling kind of expreffion, by rifing above what is ufual or vulgar, contributes to, or even forms the fublime. Nothing can be more falfe. In all the inftances of fublime writing, which I have given, nothing of this kind appears. "God faid, let there be light, and "there was light." This is ftriking and fublime. But put it into what is commonly called the fublime ftyle: "The Sovereign Arbiter of nature, "by the potent energy of a fingle word, command"ed the light to exift ;" and, as Boileau has well obferved, the style indeed is raised, but the thought is fallen. In general, in all good writing, the fublime lies in the thought, not in the words; and when the thought is truly noble, it will, for the moft part, clothe itself in a native dignity of language. The fublime, indeed, rejects mean, low, or trival expreffions; but it is equally an enemy to fuch as are turgid. The main fecret of being fublime, is to fay great things in few and plain words. It will be found to hold, without exception, that the most fublime authors are the fimpleft in their ftyle; and wherever you find a writer, who affects a more than ordinary pomp and parade of words, and is always endeavouring to magnify his fubject by epithets, there you may immediately fufpc&,