"the bitter apples of Sodom;" these are all ideas fuitable to a fublime description. Nor is this paffage of Virgil without fublimity, where the stench of the vapour in Albunea confpires fo happily with the facred horrour and gloominefs of that prophetick foreft;

At rex folicitus monftris oracula Fauni
Fatidici genitoris adit, lucofque fub alta
Confulit Albunea, nemorum quæ maxima facro
Fonte fonat; fævamque exhalat opaca Mephitim.

In the fixth book, and in a very fublime defcription, the poisonous exhalation of Acheron is not forgot, nor does it at all difagree with the other images amongst which it is introduced:

Spelunca alta fuit, vaftoque immanis hiatu Scrupea, tuta lacu nigro, nemorumque tenebris, Quam fuper haud ullæ poterant impune volantes Tendere iter pennis, talis fefe halitus atris Faucibus effundens fupera ad convexa ferebat.

I have added thefe examples, becaufe fome friends, for whofe judgment I have great deference, were of opinion, that if the fentiment ftood nakedly by ivfelf, it would be fubject, at firft view, to burlefque and ridicule; but this I imagine would principally arife from confidering the bitterness

and french in company with mean and contemptible ideas, with which it must be owned they are often united; fuch an union degrades the fublime in all other inftances as well as in thofe. But it is one of the tests by which the fublimity of an image is to be tried, not whether it becomes mean when affociated with mean ideas; but whether, when united with images of an allowed grandeur, the whole compofition is supported with dignity. Things which are terrible are always great; but when things poffefs disagreeable qualities, or fuch as have indeed fome degree of danger, but of a danger easily overcome, they are merely odious, as toads and spiders.

OF Feeling, little more can be faid than that the idea of bodily pain, in all the modes and degrees of labour, pain, anguish, torment, is productive of the fublime; and nothing else in this sense can produce it. I need not give here any fresh instances, as those given in the former fections abundantly illuftrate a remark, that in reality wants only an attention to nature, to be made by every body.

Having thus run through the causes of the fub lime with reference to all the fenfes, my firft obfervation (fect. 7.) will be found very nearly true; that the sublime is an idea belonging to self-prefervation; that it is therefore one of the most affecting we have; that its strongest emotion is an emotion of distress; and that no *pleasure from a pofitive caufe belongs to it. Numberless examples, befides those mentioned, might be brought in fupport of these truths, and many perhaps ufeful confequences drawn from them

Sed fugit interea, fugit irrevocabile tempus,
Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.

*Vide Part I. fect. 6.

THE END OF THE SECOND PART

A PHILO.

A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY

INTO THE

ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS

OF THE

SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL.

PART III.

SECTION I.

OF BEAUTY.

T is my defign to confider beauty as diftin

IT

guished from the fublime; and, in the course of the inquiry, to examine how far it is confiftent with it. But previous to this, we must take a short review of the opinions already entertained of this quality; which I think are hardly to be reduced to any fixed principles; because men are ufed to talk of beauty in a figurative manner, that is to say, in a manner extremely uncertain, and indeterminate. By beauty I mean that quality, or thofe qualities in bodies, by which they cause