But it is most certain, that their passions are very strongly roused by a fanatick preacher, or by the ballads of Chevy-chace, or the Children in the Wood, and by other little popular poems and tales that are current in that rank of life. I do not know of any paintings, bad or good, that produce the fame effect. So that poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general, as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions than the other art. And I think there are reasons in nature, why the obscure idea, when properly conveyed, should be more affecting than the clear. It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration, and chiefly excites our passions. Knowledge and acquaintance make the most striking caufes affect but little. It is thus with the vulgar; and all men are as the vulgar in what they do not understand. The ideas of eternity, and infinity, are among the most affecting we have: and perhaps there is nothing of which we really understand so little, as of infinity and eternity. We do not any where meet a more fublime defcription than this justlycelebrated one of Milton, wherein he gives the portrait of Satan with a dignity so suitable to the subject: He above the rest In shape and gesture proudly eminent Less Less than archangel ruin'd, and th' excess Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon On half the nations; and with fear of change Here is a very noble picture; and in what does this poetical picture consist? in images of a tower, an archangel, the fun rising through mists, or in an eclipse, the ruin of monarchs, and the revolu. tions of kingdoms. The mind is hurried out of itself, by a crowd of great and confused images; which affect because they are crowded and confused. For feparate them, and you lose much of the greatness; and join them, and you infallibly lofe the clearness. The images raised by poetry are always of this obfcure kind; though in general the effects of poetry are by no means to be attributed to the images it raises; which point we *shall examine more at large hereafter.* But painting, when we have allowed for the pleasure of imitation, can only affect fimply by the images it presents; and even in painting, a judicious obfcurity in some things contributes to the effect of the picture; because the images in painting are exactly fumilar to those in nature; and in nature dark, confused, uncertain images have a greater power on the fancy to form the grander passions, than those have which are more clear and determinate. But where and when this obfervation may be applied to practice, and how far it shall be extended, will be better deduced from the nature of the fubject, and from the occafion, than from any rules that can be given. I am sensible that this idea has met with oppofition, and is likely still to be rejected by several. But let it be confidered, that hardly any thing can strike the mind with its greatness, which does not make fome fort of approach towards infinity; which nothing can do whilst we are able to perceive its bounds; but to fee an object distinctly, and to perceive its bounds, is one and the fame thing. A clear idea is therefore another name for a little idea. There is a passage in the book of Job amazingly fublime, and this fublimity is principally due to the terrible uncertainty of the thing described : In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep leep falleth upon men, fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a fpirit paffed before my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. It Stood Still, but I could not difcern the form thereof; an image was before mine eyes; there was filence; and I heard a voice, -Shall mortal man be more just than God? We are first prepared with the utmost folemnity for the vision; we are first terrified, before we are let even into the obfcure caufe of our emotion: but when this grand cause of terrour makes its appearance, what is it? is it not wrapt up in the shades of its own incomprehenfible darknefs, more aweful, more ftriking, more terrible, than the liveliest description, than the clearest painting, could poffibly represent it? When painters have attempted to give us clear representations of these very fanciful and terrible ideas, they have, I think, almost always failed; infomuch that I have been at a lofs, in all the pictures I have feen of hell, whether the painter did not intend something ludicrous. Several painters have handled a subject of this kind with a view of afsembling as many horrid phantoms as their imaginations could fuggeft; but all the designs I have chanced to meet of the temptations of St. Anthony, were rather a fort of odd wild grotesques, than any thing capable of producing a ferious paffion. In all these subjects poetry is very happy. Its apparitions, its chimeras, its harpies, its allegorical figures, are grand and affecting; and though Virgil's Fame, and Homer's Difcord, are obfcure, they are magnificent figures. These figures in painting would be clear enough, but I fear they might become ridiculous. fore 1 SECT. V. POWER. BESIDES those things which directly suggest the idea of danger, and those which produce a similar effect from a mechanical cause, I know of nothing fublime, which is not fome modification of power. And this branch rises as naturally as the other two branches, from terrour, the common stock of every thing that is fublime. The idea of power, at first view, seems of the class of those indifferent ones, which may equally belong to pain or to pleasure. But in reality, the affection arifing from the idea of vast power, is extremely remote from that neutral character. For first, we must remember,* that the idea of pain, in its highest degree, is much stronger than the highest degree of pleasure; and that it preferves the fame fuperiority through all the fubordinate gradations. From hence it is, that where the chances for equal degrees of fuffering or enjoyment are in any fort equal, the idea of the suffering must always be prevalent. And indeed the ideas of pain, and above all of death, are so very affecting, that whilst we remain in the prefence of whatever is supposed to have the power of inflicting either, it is impossible to be perfectly free from terrour. Again, we know by experience, that for the enjoyment of pleafure, no great * Part I, sect. 7. efforts : |