harmony, the representation of great actions, or the recital of noble sentiments, but with soft and voluptuous melody, intermingled with the praises of PATRONAGE and PRIDE, by whom they were heard at once with pleasure and contempt. Some were indeed admitted by CAPRICE, when they least expected it, and heaped by PATRONAGE with the gifts of FORTUNE, but they were from that time chained to her footftool, and condemned to regulate their lives by her glances and her nods; they feemed proud of their manacles, and feldom complained of any drudgery, however fervile, or any affront, however contemptuous; yet they were often, notwithstanding their obedience, feized on a fudden by CAPRICE, divefted of their ornaments, and thrust back into the Hall of Expectation. Here they mingled again with the tumult, and all, except a few whom experience had taught to feek happiness in the regions of liberty, continued to fpend hours, and days, and years, courting the fmile of CAPRICE by the arts of FLATTERY; till at length. new crowds preffed in upon them, and drove them forth at different outlets into the habitations of DisEASE, and SHAME, and POVERTY, and DESPAIR, where they paffed the reft of their lives in narratives of promises and breaches of faith, of joys and forrows, of hopes and difappointments. The SCIENCES, after a thousand indignities, retired from the palace of PATRONAGE, and having long wandered over the world in grief and diftrefs, were led at laft to the cottage of INDEPENDENCE, the daughter of FORTITUDE; where they were taught by PRUDENCE and PARSIMONY to fupport themselves in dignity and quiet. NUMB. 92. SATURDAY, February 2, 1751. I T has been long obferved, that the idea of beauty is vague and undefined, different in different minds, and diverfified by time or place. It has been a term hitherto ufed to fignify that which pleases us we know not why, and in our approbation of which we can justify ourselves only by the concurrence of numbers, without much power of enforcing our opinion upon others by any argument, but example and authority. It is, indeed, fo little fubject to the examinations of reafon, that Pafchal fuppofes it to end where demonftration begins, and maintains, that without incongruity and abfurdity we cannot fpeak of geometrical beauty. To trace all the fources of that various pleafure which we afcribe to the agency of beauty, or to difentangle all the perceptions involved in its idea, would, perhaps, require a very great part of the life of Ariftotle or Plato. It is, however, in many cafes, apparent that this quality is merely relative and comparative; that we pronounce things beautiful because they have fomething which we agree, for what whatever reason, to call beauty, in a greater degree than we have been accustomed to find it in other things of the fame kind; and that we transfer the epithet as our knowledge increases and appro priate it to higher excellence, when higher excellence comes within our view. Much of the beauty of writing is of this kind; and therefore Boileau justly remarks, that the books which have ftood the test of time, and been admired through all the changes which the mind of man has fuffered from the various revolutions of knowledge, and the prevalence of contrary customs, have a better claim to our regard than any modern can boast, because the long continuance of their reputation proves that they are adequate to our faculties, and agreeable to nature. It is, however, the task of criticifm to establish principles; to improve opinion into knowledge; and to distinguish thofe means of pleafing which depend upon known caufes and rational deduction, from the nameless and inexplicable elegancies which appeal wholly to the fancy, from which we feel delight, but know not how they produce it, and which may well be termed the enchantreffes of the foul. Criticism reduces those regions of literature under the dominion of science, which have hitherto known only the anarchy of ignorance, the caprices of fancy, and the tyranny of prefcription. There is nothing in the art of verfifying so much exposed to the power of imagination as the accommodation of the found to the fenfe, or the reprefentation of particular images, by the flow of the verse VOL. VI. K in in which they are expreffed. Every student has innumerable paffages, in which he, and perhaps he alone, difcovers fuch refemblances; and fince the attention of the prefent race of poetical readers feems particularly turned upon this fpecies of elegance, I fhall endeavour to examine how much thefe conformities have been obferved by the poets, or directed by the criticks, how far they can be established upon nature and reason, and on what occafions they have been practifed by Milton. Homer, the father of all poetical beauty, has been particularly celebrated by Dionyfius of Halicarnaffus, as be that, of all the poets, exhibited the greatest variety of found; for there are, fays he, innumerable paffages, in which length of time, bulk of body, extremity of poffien, and stillness of repofe; or, in which, on the contrary, brevity, speed, and eagerness, are evidently marked out by the found of the fyllables. Thus the anguish and flow pace with which the blind Polypheme groped out with his hands the entrance of bis cave, are perceived in the cadence of the verjes which defcribe it. Κύκλωψ δὲ σενάχων τε καὶ ὠδίνων ἐδυνησε, Χεσεὶ ψηλοφόων. ψηλοφύων Mean time the cyclep raging with his wound, Spreads his wide arms, and fearches round and round. POPE. The critick then proceeds to fhew, that the efforts of Achilles ftruggling in his armour against the current of a river, fometimes refifting and fometimes yielding, may be perceived in the clifions of the fyllables; the the flow fucceffion of the feet, and the strength of the confonants. Δεινον δ' αμφ' Αχιλῆα κυκώμενον ἴσατο κῦμα. So oft the furge, in watry mountains spread, Wash'd from beneath him, flides the flimy foil. POPE. When Homer defcribes the crush of men dashed against a rock, he collects the most unpleafing and harfh founds. Σὺν δὲ δύω μάρψας, ώςε σκύλακας ποτὶ γαίη Snatch'd two, unhappy! of my martial band, POPE. And when he would place before the eyes fomething dreadful and astonishing, he makes choice of the strongest vowels, and the letters of most difficult ut terance. Τῆ δ ̓ ἐπὶ μὲν Γοργώ βλοσυρώπις ἐςεφάνωτο POPE. |