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dimensions always constitutes a principal part. No pile of building can convey any idea of Sublimity, unless it be ample and lofty. There is too in architecture what is called Greatness of manner; which seems chiefly to arise from presenting the object to us in one full point of view; so that it shall make its impression whole, entire, and undivided, upon the mind. A Gothic cathedral raises ideas of grandeur in our minds, by its size, its height, its awful obscurity, its strength, its antiquity, and its durability.

There still remains to be mentioned one class of Sublime objects, which may be called the moral, or sentimental Sublime; arising from certain exertions of the human mind; from certain affections, and actions, of our fellow-creatures. These will be found to be all, or chiefly of that class, which comes under the head of Magnanimity, or Heroism; and they produce an effect extremely similar to what is produced by the view of grand objects in nature; filling the mind with admiration, and elevating it above itself. A noted instance of this, quoted by all the French Critics, is the celebrated Qu'il Mourut of Corneille, in the Tragedy of Horace. In the famous combat between the Horatii and the Curiatii, the old Horatius, being informed that two of his sons are slain, and that the third had betaken himself to flight, at first would not believe the report; but being thoroughly assured of the fact, is fired with all the sentiments of high honour and indignation, at this supposed unworthy behaviour of his surviving son. He is reminded that his son stood alone against three, and asked what he wished him to have done? -"To have died," In the same

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mánner Porus, taken prisoner by Alexander, after a gallant defence, and asked how he wished to be treated? answering, "Like a King;" and Cæsar chiding the pilot who was afraid to set out with him in a storm, "Quid times? Cæsarem vehis;" are good instances of this sentimental Sublime. Whereever, in some critical and high situation, we behold a man uncommonly intrepid, and resting upon himself; superior to passion and to fear; animated by some great principle to the contempt of popular opinion, of selfish interest, of dangers, or of death; there we are struck with a sense of the sublime. *

High virtue is the most natural and fertile source of this moral Sublimity. However, on some occasions, where Virtue either has no place, or is but imperfectly displayed, yet if extraordinary vigour and force of mind be discovered, we are not insen

The Sublime, in natural and moral objects, is brought before us in one view, and compared together, in the following beautiful passage of Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination:

Look then abroad through nature; to the range
Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres,
Wheeling, unshaken, through the void immense;
And speak, O man! does this capacious scene,
With half that kindling majesty, dilate
Thy strong conception, as when Brutus rose
Refulgent, from the stroke of Cæsar's fate,
Amid the crowd of patriots; and his arm
Aloft extending, like eternal Jove,

When guilt brings down the thunder, call'd aloud
On Tully's name, and shook his crimson steel,
And bade the father of his country hail !

For lo! the tyrant prostrate on the dust;
And Rome again is free.

Book I.

sible to a degree of grandeur in the character; and from the splendid conqueror, or the daring conspirator, whom we are far from approving, we cannot withhold our admiration. *

I have now enumerated a variety of instances, both in inanimate objects and in human life, where the Sublime appears. In all these instances the emotion raised in us is of the same kind, although the objects that produce the emotion be of widely different kinds. A question next arises, whether we are able to discover some one fundamental quality in which all these different objects agree, and which is the cause of their producing an emotion of the same nature in our minds? Various hypotheses have been formed concerning this; but, as far as appears to me,

* Silius Italicus studied to give an august idea of Hannibal, by representing him as surrounded with all his victories, in the place of guards. One who had formed a design of assassinating him in the midst of a feast, is thus addressed:

Fallit te, mensas inter quod credis inermem;

Tot bellis quæsita viro, tot cædibus, armat
Majestas æterna ducem. Si admoveris ora

Cannas, & Trebiam ante oculos, Trasymenaque busta
Et Pauli stare ingentem miraberis umbram.

A thought somewhat of the same nature occurs in a French author: "11 se cache; mais sa reputation le decouvre; Il marche 66 sans suite & sans equipage; mais chacun, dans son esprit, le "met sur un char de triomphe. On compte, en le voiant, les “ennemis qu'il a vaincus, non pas les serviteurs qui le suivent. “Tout seul qu'il est, on se figure, autour de lui, ses vertus, & ses "victoires que l'accompagnent. Moins il est superbe, plus il "devient venerable." Oraison funebre de M. de Turenne, par M. Flechier. - Both these passages are splendid, rather than sublime. In the first there is a want of justness in the thought; in the second, of simplicity in the expression.

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hitherto unsatisfactory. Some have imagined that amplitude or great extent, joined with simplicity, is either immediately, or remotely, the fundamental quality of whatever is sublime; but we have seen that amplitude is confined to one species of Sublime Objects; and cannot, without violent straining, be applied to them all. The author of "a Philoso

phical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the "Sublime and Beautiful," to whom we are indebted for several ingenious and original thoughts upon this subject, proposes a formal theory upon this foundation; That terror is the source of the Sublime, and that no objects have this character but such as produce impressions of pain and danger. It is indeed true, that many terrible objects are highly sublime; and that grandeur does not refuse an alliance with the idea of danger. But though this is very properly illustrated by the Author (many of whose sentiments on that head I have adopted), yet he seems to stretch his theory too far, when he represents the Sublime as consisting wholly in modes of danger, or of pain. For the proper sensation of Sublimity appears to be distinguishable from the sensation of either of these; and, on several occasions, to be entirely separated from them. In many grand objects, there is no coincidence with terror at all; as in the magnificent prospect of wide extended plains, and of the starry firmament; or in the moral dispositions and sentiments, which we view with high admiration; and in many painful and terrible objects also, it is clear, there is no sort of grandeur. The amputation of a limb, or the bite of a snake, are exceedingly terrible; but are destitute of all claim whatever to Sublimity. I am inclined to think, that mighty force or power,

whether accompanied with terror or not, whether employed in protecting or in alarming us, has a better title than any thing that has yet been mentioned, to be the fundamental quality of the Sublime; as, after the review which we have taken, there does not occur to me any Sublime Object, into the idea of which, power, strength, and force, either enter, not directly, or are not, at least, intimately associated with the idea, by leading our thoughts to some astonishing power, as concerned in the production of the object. However, I do not insist upon this as sufficient to found a general theory; it is enough to have given this view of the nature and different kinds of Sublime Objects; by which I hope to have laid a proper foundation for discussing, with greater accuracy, the Sublime in Writing and Composition.

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HAVING treated of Grandeur or Sublimity, in external objects, the way seems now to be cleared, for treating, with more advantage, of the description of such objects; or, of what is called the Sublime in Writing. Though I may appear to enter early on the consideration of this subject; yet, as the Sublime is a Species of Writing which depends less than any

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