have no ideas; and yet harder to convince them, that in the ordinary course of conversation we are fufficiently understood without raising any images of the things concerning which we speak. It feems to be an odd fubject of dispute with any man, whether he has ideas in his mind or not. Of this, at first view, every man in his own forum, ought to judge without appeal. But, strange as it may appear, we are often at a loss to know what ideas we have of things, or whether we have any ideas at all upon fome subjects. It even requires a good deal of attention to be thoroughly fatisfied on this head. Since I wrote these papers, I found two very ftriking instances of the possibility there is, that a man may hear words without having any idea of the things which they reprefent, and yet afterwards be capable of returning them to others, combined in a new way, and with great propriety, energy, and instruction. The first instance is that of Mr. Blacklock, a poet blind from his birth. Few men bleffed with the most perfect fight can defcribe visual objects with more spirit and justness than this blind man; which cannot possibly be attributed to his having a clearer conception of the things he defcribes than is common to other perfons. Mr. Spence, in an elegant preface which he has written to the works of this poet, reasons very ingenioufly, and, I imagine, for the most part, very rightly, upon the cause of this extraordinary pheno X3 phænomenon; but I cannot altogether agree with him, that some improprieties in language and thought, which occur in these poems, have arifen from the blind poet's imperfect conception of visual objects, since such improprieties, and much greater, may be found in writers even of an higher class than Mr. Blacklock, and who notwithstanding poffefsed the faculty of feeing in its full perfection. Here is a poet doubtless as much affected by his own descriptions, as any that reads them can be; and yet he is affected with this strong enthusiasm by things of which he neither has, nor can poffibly have any idea further than that of a bare found: and why may not those who read his works be affected in the fame manner that he was; with as little of any real ideas of the things described? The second instance is of Mr. Saunderson, profeffor of mathematicks in the university of Cambridge. This learned man had acquired great knowledge in natural philosophy, in astronomy, and whatever sciences depend upon mathematical skill. What was the most extraordinary and the most to my purpose, he gave excellent lectures upon light and colours; and this man taught others the theory of those ideas which they had, and which he himself undoubtedly had not. But it is probable that the words red, blue, green, answered to him as well as the ideas of the colours themselves; for the ideas of greater or leffer degrees of refrangibility being applied to these words, and the blind man being instructed in what other respects they were found to agree or to difagree, it was as easy for him to reason upon the words, as if he had been fully master of the ideas. Indeed it must be owned he could make no new discoveries in the way of experiment. He did nothing but what we do every day in common discourse. When I wrote this last sentence, and used the words every day and common discourse, I had no images in my mind of any fuccession of time; nor of men in conference with each other; nor do I imagine that the reader will have any fuch ideas on reading it. Neither when I spoke of red, or blue and green, as well as refrangibility, had I these several colours, or the rays of light paffing into a different medium, and there diverted from their course, painted before me in the way of images. I know very well that the mind poffefses a faculty of raising such images at pleasure; but then an act of the will is necefsary to this; and in ordinary conversation or reading it is very rarely that any image at all is excited in the mind. If I say "I shall go to Italy next fummer," I am well understood. Yet I believe nobody has by this painted in his imagination the exact figure of the speaker paffing by land or by water, or both; fometimes on horseback, fometimes in a carriage; with all the particulars of the journey. Still less has he any idea of Italy, the X 4 country country to which I proposed to go; or of the greenness of the fields, the ripening of the fruits, and the warmth of the air, with the change to this from a different season, which are the ideas for which the word summer is substituted; but least of all has he any image from the word next; for this word stands for the idea of many fummers, with the exclufion of all but one: and surely the man who fays next fummer, has no images of fuch a fucceffion, and fuch an exclusion. In short, it is not only of those ideas which are commonly called abstract, and of which no image at all can be formed, but even of particular real beings, that we converse without having any idea of them excited in the imagination; as will certainly appear on a diligent examination of our own minds. Indeed, fo little does poetry depend for its effect on the power of raising sensible images, that I am convinced it would lose a very confiderable part of its energy if this were the neceffary refult of all description. Because that union of affecting words, which is the most powerful of all poetical inftru. ments, would frequently lose its force along with its propriety and confiftency, if the sensible images were always excited. There is not perhaps in the whole Eneid a more grand and laboured passage than the defcription of Vulcan's cavern in Etna, and the works that are there carried on. Virgil dwells particularly on the formation of the thunder, which he describes unfinished under the hammers of the Cyclops. But what are the principles of this extraordinary compofition? der, : Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquofæ This seems to me admirably fublime; yet if we attend coolly to the kind of fenfible images which a combination of ideas of this fort must form, the chimeras of madmen cannot appear more wild and abfurd than fuch a picture. "Three rays of twisted “showers, three of watery clouds, three of fire, and "three of the winged fouth wind; then mixed they “ in the work terrifick lightnings, and found and fear, " and anger, with pursuing flames." This strange compofition is formed into a gross body; it is hammered by the Cyclops, it is in part polished, and partly continues rough. The truth is, if poetry gives us a noble assemblage of words correfponding to many noble ideas, which are connected by circumstances of time or place, or related to each other as cause and effect, or affociated in any natural way, they may be moulded together in any form, and perfectly answer their end. The picturefque connexion is not demanded; because no real picture is formed; nor is the effect of the description |