the imagination; fuch a particular smell or colour is able to fill the mind, on a fudden, with the picture of the fields or gardens where we first met with it, and to bring up into view all the variety of images that once attended it. Our imagination takes the hint, and leads us unexpectedly into cities or theatres, plains or meadows. We may further obferve, when the fancy thus reflects on the fcenes that have paft in it formerly, thofe, which were at first pleasant to behold, appear more fo upon reflection, and that the memory heightens the delightfulness of the original. A Cartefian would account for both these inftances in the following manner. The fet of ideas which we received from fuch a profpect or garden, having entered the mind at the fame time, have a fet of traces belonging to them in the brain, bordering very near one upon another; when, therefore, any one of thefe ideas arifes in the imagination, and confequently difpatches a flow of animal fpirits to its proper trace, thefe fpirits, in the violence of their motion, run not only into the trace, to which they were particularly directed, but into feveral of thofe that lie about it. By this means they awaken other ideas of the fame fet, which immediately determine a new difpatch of fpirits, that in the fame manner open other neighbouring traces, till at last the whole fet of them is blown up, and the whole profpe&t or garden flourishes in the imagination. But because the pleasure we received from these places far furmounted, and overcame the little difagreeableness we found in them; for this reafon there was at first a wider paffage worn in the pleasure traces, and on the contrary, fo narrow a one in thofe which belonged to the difagreeable ideas, that they were quickly ftopt up, and rendered incapable of receiving any animal fpirits, and confequently of exciting any unpleasant ideas in the memory. It would be in vain to inquire, whether the power of imagining things ftrongly proceeds from any greater perfection in the foul, or from any nicer texture in the brain of one man than of another: but this is certain, that a noble writer fhould be born with this faculty in its full ftrength and vigour, fo as to be able to receive lively ideas from outward objects, to retain them Jong, and to range them together, upon occafion, in fuch figures and reprefentatlons as are most likely to hit the fancy of the reader. A poet fhould take as much pains in forming his imagination, as a philofopher in cultivating his underftanding. He must gain a due relifh of the works of nature, and be thoroughly converfant in the various scenery of a country life. When he is stored with country images, if he would go beyond pastoral, and the lower kinds of poetry, he ought to acquaint himself with the pomp and magnificence of courts. He fhould be very well verfed in every thing that is noble and stately in the productions of art, whether it appear in painting or ftatuary, in the great works of architecture which are in their prefent glory, or in the ruins of thofe which flourished in former ages. Such advantages as thefe help to open a man's thoughts, and to enlarge his imagination, and will therefore have their influence on all kinds of writing, if the author knows how to make right ufe of them. And among thofe of the Tearned languages who excel in this talent, the molt perfect in their feveral kinds are perhaps Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. The first strikes the imagination wonderfully with what is great, the fecond with what is beautiful, and the last with what is ftrange. Reading the Iliad, is like tra velling through a country uninhabited, where the fancy is entertained with a thousand savage profpects of vaft deferts, wide uncultivated marthes, huge forefts, mif-fhapen rocks and precipices. On the contrary, the neid is like a well ordered garden, where it is impoffible to find out any part unadorned or to cast our eyes upon a single spot, that does not produce fome beautiful plant or flower. But when we are in the Metamorphofis we are walking on enchanted ground, and fee nothing but fcenes of magic lying round us. Homer is in his province, when he is defcribing a battle or a multitude, a hero or a god. Virgil is never better pleased, than when he is in his Elyfium, or copying out an entertaining picture. Homer's epithets generally mark out what is great. Virgil's what is agreeable. Nothing can be more magnificent than the figure Jupiter makes in the firft Iliad, nor more charming than that of Venus in the first Æneid. Η, και κυανέησιν ἐπ ̓ ὀφρύσι νεῖσε Κρονίων, Αμβρόσιαι δ' άρα χαῖται ἐπεξξώσονο ἄνακος, Κρατὸς ἀπ αθανατοιο. μέγαν δ' ἐλέλιξεν Ολυμπον, απ IL. lib. 1. v. 528. In a word, Homer fills his readers with fublime ideas, and, I believe, has raised the imagination of all the good poets that have come after him. I fhall only inftance Horace, who immediately takes fire at the first hint of any paffage in the Iliad or Odyssey, and always rises above himself, when he has Homer in his view, Virgil has drawn together, into his Æneid, all the pleasing fcenes his fubject is capable of admitting, and in his Georgics has given us a collection of the mo moft delightful landskips that can be made out of fields and woods, herds of cattle, and swarms of bees. Ovid, in his Metamorphofis, has fhewn us how the imagination may be affected by what is ftrange. He defcribes a miracle in every ftory, and always gives us the fight of fome new creature at the end of it. His art confifts chiefly in well-timing his defcription, before the first shape is quite worn off, and the new one perfectly finished; fo that he every where entertains us with fomething we never faw before, and fhews monster after monster to the end of the Metamorphofis. If I were to name a poet that is a perfect mafter in all these arts of working on the imagination, I think Milton may pafs for one; and if his Paradife Loft falls fhort of the Eneid or Iliad in this refpect, it proceeds rather from the fault of the language in which it is written, than from any defect of genius in the author. So divine a poem in English, is like a ftately palace built of brick, where one may fee architecture in as great a perfection as in one of marble, though the materials are of a coarser nature. But to confider it only as it regards our prefent fubject; what can be conceived greater than the battle of angels, the majefty of Meffiah, the ftature and behaviour of Satan and his peers? What more beautiful than Pandemonium, Paradife, Heaven, Angels, Adam and Eve? What more strange, than the creation of the world, the feveral metamorphofes of the fallen angels, and the furprifing adventures their leader meets with in his fearch after Paradife? No other fubject could have furnished a poet with fcenes fo proper to ftrike the imagination, as no other poet could have painted thofe fcenes in more strong and lively colours. N° 418. MONDAY, JUNE 30. -feret & rubus asper amomum. VIRG. Ecl, 3. v. 89 The rugged thorn shall bear the fragrant rose. HE pleasures of these fecondary views of T the imagination, are of a wider and more univerfal nature than thofe it has when joined with fight; for not only what is great, ftrange or beautiful, but any thing that is difagreeable when looked upon, pleases us in an apt defcrip→ tion. Here, therefore, we must enquire after a new principle of pleasure, which is nothing elfe but the action of the mind, which compares the ideas that arife from words, with the ideas that arife from the objects themselves; and why this operation of the mind is attended with fo much pleasure, we have before confidered. For this reason therefore, the defcription of a dunghill is pleafing to the imagination, if the image be reprefented to our minds by fuitable expreffions; though perhaps, this may be more properly called the pleafure of the understanding than of the fancy, because we are not fo much delighted with the image that is contained in the defcription, as with the aptnefs of the defcription to excite the image. But if the defcription of what is little, common, or deformed, be acceptable to the imagination, the defcription of what is great, furprifng, of beautiful, is much more fo; becaufe here we are not only delighted with comparing the reprefentation with the original, but are highly pleafed with the original itself. Most readers, I believe, are more charmed with Mil. ton's defcription of paradife, than of hell; they are both, perhaps, equally perfect in their kind, but in the one the brimstone and fulphur are not fo refreshing to the imagination, as the beds of flowers and the wilderness of fweets in the other. There is yet another circumftance which recommends a defcription more than all the rest, and that is if it represents to us fuch objects as are apt to raise a fecret ferment in the mind of the reader, and to work, with violence, upon his paffions. For, in this cafe, we are at once 'warmed and enlightened, fo that the pleasure becomes more univerfal, and is feveral ways qualified to entertain us. Thus in painting, it is pleafant to look on the picture of any face, where the refemblance is hit, but the pleasure increafes, if it be the picture of a face that is beautiful, and is ftill greater, if the beauty be foftened with an air of melancholy or forrow. The two leading paffions which the more ferious parts of poetry endeavour to stir up in us,are terror and pity. And here, by the way, one would wonder how it comes to pafs that fuch paffions as are very unpleasant at all other times, are very agreeable when excited by proper defcriptions. It is not ftrange, that we should take delight in fuch paffages as are apt to produce hope, joy, admiration, love, or the like emotions in us, because they never rife in the mind without an inward pleasure which attends them. But how comes it to pafs, that we should take delight in being terrified or dejected by a defcription, when we find fo much uneafinefs in the fear or grief which we receive from any other occafion? If we confider, therefore, the nature of this pleafure, we shall find that it does not arise fo properly from the description of what is terrible, as from the reflection we make on ourselves at the time of reading it. When we look on fuch hideous objects, we are not a little pleased to think we are in no danger of them. We confider them, at the fame time, as dreadful and harmless; fo that the more frightful appearance they make, the greater is the pleasure we receive from the fenfe of our own fafety. In short, we look upon the terrors of a defcription, with the fame curiofity and fatisfaction that we furvey a dead monster. -Informe cadaver VIRG. Æn. 8, v. 264. -They drag him from his den, The wond'ring neighbourhood, with glad fur- Beheld his fhagged breast, his giant size, DRYDEN. N° 419. TUESDAY, JULY 1, HOR. Ep. 2. 1. 2. v. 140. HERE is a kind of writing, wherein the Tpost quite lofes fight of nature, and en our pleasure does not flow fo properly from the grief which fuch melancholy defcriptions give us, as from the fecret comparison which we make between ourselves and the perfon who fuffers. Such reprefentations teach us to fet a juft value upon our own condition, and make us prize our In pleasing error løft, and charmingly deceiv'd. good, fortune, which exempts us from the like calamities. This is, however, fuch a kind of pleasure as we are not capable of receiving, when we see a perfon actually lying under the tortures that we meet with in a defcription; becaufe in this cafe the object preffes too clofe upon our fenfes, and bears fo hard upon us, that it does not give us time or leifure to reflect on ourselves. Our thoughts are fo intent upon the miferies of the fufferer, that we cannot turn them upon our own happiness. Whereas, on the contrary, we confider the misfortunes we read in history or poetry, either as paft, or as fictitious, fo that the reflection upon ourselves rifes in us infenfibly, and overbears the forrow we conceive for the fufferings of the afflicted. But because the mind of man requires fomething more perfect in matter, than what it finds there, and can never meet with any fight in na ture which fufficiently answers its highest idea of pleasantnefs; or, in other words, because the imagination can fancy to itself things more great, ftrange, or beautiful, than the eye ever faw, and is ftill fenfible of fome defect in what it has feen; on this account it is the part of a poet to humour the imagination in its own notions, by mending and perfecting nature where he defcribes a reality, and by adding greater beauties than are put together in nature, where he defcribes a fiction. He is not obliged to attend her in the flow advances which the makes from one season to ano ther, or to obferve her conduct in the fucceffive production of plants and flowers. He may draw into his description all the beauties of the spring and autumn, and make the whole year contribute fomething to render it the more agreeable. His rofe trees, wood-bines, and jeffamines may flower together, and his beds be covered at the fame time with lillies, violets, and amaranths. His foil is not reftrained to any particular fet of plants, but is proper either for oaks or myrtles, and adapts itself to the products of every climate. Oranges may grow wild in it; myrrh may be met with in every hedge, and if he thinks it proper to have a grove of ipices, he can quickly command fun enough to raise it. If all this will not furnish out an agreeable scene, he can make several new fpecies of flowers, with richer fcents and higher colours than any that grow in the gardens of nature. His concerts of birds may be as full and harmonious, and his woods as thick and gloomy as he pleafes. He is at no more expence of a long vifta, than a fhort one, and can as eafily throw his cascades from a precipice of half a mile high, as from one of twenty yards. He has his choice of the winds, and can turn the courfe of his rivers in all the variety of meanders, that are most delightful to the reader's imagination. In a word, he has the modelling of nature in his own hands, and may give her what charms he pleafes, provided he does not reform her too much, and run into abfurdities, by endeavouring to excel, racters and actions of fuch perfons as have many tertains his reader's imagination with the chaof them no exiftence but what he bestows on them. Such are fairies, witches, magicians, dæmons, and departed spirits. This Mr. Dayden calls the fairy way of writing,' which is, indeed, more difficult than any other that depends on the poet's fancy, because he has no pattern to follow in it, and must work altogether out of his own invention. / for this fort of writing, and it is impoffible for There is a very odd turn of thought required a poet to fucceed in it, who has not a particular caft of fancy, and an imagination naturally fruitful and fuperftitious. Befides this he ought to be very well verfed in legends and fables, antiquated romances, and the traditions of nurfes and old women, that he may fall in with our natural prejudices, and humour thofe notions which we have imbibed in our infancy. For otherwise he will be apt to make his fairies talk like people of his own species, and not like other fets of beings, who converfe with different objects, and think in a different manner from that of mankind. I do not fay with Mr. Bays in the Rehearsal, that fpirits must not be confined to speak fenfe, but it is certain their fenfe ought to be a little difcoloured, that it may feem particular, and proper to the perfon and condition of the fpeaker. Thefe defcriptions raise a pleafing kind of horror in the mind of the reader, and amuse his imagination with the ftrangeners and novelty of the perfons who are reprefented in them. They bring up into our memory the stories we have heard in our childhood, and favour thofe fecret terrors and apprehenfions to which the mind of man is naturally fubject. We are pleased with furveying the different habits and behaviours of foreign countries; how much more muft we be delighted and furprifed when we are led, as it were, into a new creation, and fee the perfons and manners of another fpecies? Men of cold fancies and philofophical difpofitions, object to this kind of poetry, that it has not probability enough to affect the imagination. But to this it may be anfwered, that we are fure in general, there are many intellectual beings in the world befide ourselves, and feveral fpecies of fpirits, who are fubject to different laws and economies from those of mankind; when we fee, therefore, any of thefe reprefented naturally, we cannot look upon the reprefentation as altogether impoffible; nay, many are prepoffeft with fuch alfe opinions, as difpofe them to believe this particu lar delufion; at leaft we have all heard fo many pleafing relations in favour of them, that we do not care for feeing through the falfhood, and willingly give ourselves up to fo agreeable an impofture. N° 420. WEDNESDAY, JULY 2. The ancients have not much of this poetry And raise mens paffions to what height they will among them; for, indeed, almost all the whole ROSCOMMON. substance of it owes its original to the darkness and fuperftition of latter ages, when pious frauds were made ufe of to amufe mankind, and frighten them into a fenfe of their duty. Our forefathers looked upon nature with more reverence and horror, before the world was enlightened by learning and philofophy, and loved to aftonish themselves with the apprehenfions of witchcraft, prodigies, charms, and inchantments. There was not a village in England that had not a ghoft in it, the church-yards were all haunted, every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it, and there was scarce a fhepherd to be met with who had no: féen a spirit. Among all the poets of this kind our English are much the beft, by what I have yet feen; whether it be that we abound with more ftories of this nature, or that the genius of our country is fitter for this fort of poetry. For the Eng. lish are naturally fanciful, and very often difpofed by that gloominefs and melancholy of temper, which is fo frequent in our nation, to many wild notions and vifions, to, which others are not fo liable. Among the English, Shakespear has incom. parably excelled all others. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in fo great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch this weak fuperftitious part of his reader's imagination; and made him capable of fucceeding, where he had nothing to fupport him befides the ftrength of his own genius. There is fomething fo wild and yet fo folemn in the fpeeches of his ghofts, fairies, witches, and the like imaginary perfons, that we cannot forbear thinking them natural, though we have no rule by which to judge of them, and must confefs, if there are fuch beings in the world, it looks highly probable they fhould talk and act as he has reprefented them. There is another fort of imaginary beings, that we fometimes meet with among the poets, when the author reprefents any paffion, appetite, virtue or vice, under a vifible shape, and makes it a perfon or an actor in his poem. Of this nature are the defcriptions of Hunger and Envy in Ovid, of Fame in Virgil, and of Sin and Death in Milton. We find a whole creation of the like fhadowy perfons in Spenfer, who had an admirable talent in reprefentations of this kind. I have difcourfed of thefe emblematical perfons in former papers, and fhall therefore only mention them in this place. Thus we fee how inany ways poetry addreffes itfelf to the imagination, as it has not only the whole circle of nature for its province, but makes new worlds of its own, fhews us perfons who are not to be found in being, and reprefents even the faculties of the foul, with the feveral virtues and vices, in a fenfible fhape and character. I fhall, in my two following papers, confider in general, how other kinds of writing are qualified to pleafe the imagination, with which I intend to conclude this effay, A their feveral materials from outward objects, and join them together at their own pleafure, there are others who are obliged to follow mature more closely, and to take intire scenes out of her. Such are hiftorians, natural philofophers, travellers, geographers, and in a word, all who defcribe vifible objects of a real exif S the writers in poetry and fiction borrow tence. It is the most agreeable talent of an historian to be able to draw up his armies and fight his battles in proper expreffions, to fet before our eyes the divifions, cabals and jealoufies of great. men, and to lead us step by step into the feveral actions and events of his hiftory. We love to fee the fubject unfolding itfelf by just degrees, and breaking upon us infenfibly, that fo we may be kept in a pleafing fufpence, and have time given us to ra fe our expectations, and to fide with one of the parties concerned in the relation. I confefs this fhews more the art than the veracity of the hiftorian, but I am only to fpeak of him as he is qualified to please the imagination. And in this refpect Livy has, perhaps, excelled all who went before him, or have written fince his time. He defcribes every thing in fo lively a manner, that his whole history is an admirable picture, and touches on fuch proper circumftances in every ftory, that his reader becomes a kind of fpectator, and feels in himself all the variety of paffions which are correspondent to the feveral parts of the relation. ་ We are not a But among this fet of writers there are none who more gratify and enlarge the imagination, than the authors of the new philofophy, whether we confider their theories of the earth or heavens, the difcoveries they have made by glasses, or any other contemplations on nature. little pleafed to find every green leaf fwarm with millions of animals, that at their largest growth are not visible to the naked eye. There is fomething very engaging to the fancy, as well as to our reason, in the treatifes of metals, minerals, plants, and meteors. But when we furvey the whole earth at once, and the feveral planets that lie within its neighbourhood, we are filled with a pleafing aftonishment, to fee fo many worlds hanging one above another, and fliding round their axles in fuch an amazing pomp and folemnity. If, after this, we contemplate those wild fields of Æther, that reach in height as far as from Saturn to the fixed fars, and run abroad almoft to an infinitude, our imagination finds its capacity filled with fo immenfe a profpe, and puts itfelf upon the ftretch to comprehend it. But if we yet rife higher, and confider the fixed ftars as fo many vaft oceans of flame, that are each of them attended with a different fet of planets, and ftill difcover new firmaments and new lights that are funk farther in those unfathomable depths of Ether, fo as not to be seen by the strongest of our telescopes, we are lost in fuch a labyrinth of funs and worlds, and confounded with the immenfity and magnificence of nature. Nothing 1 Nothing is more pleasant to the fancy, than to enlarge itself by degrees, in its contemplation of the various proportions which its feveral objects bear to each other, when it compares the body of man to the bulk of the whole earth, the earth to the circle it defcribes round the fun, that circle to the fphere of the fixed ftars, the fphere of the fixed ftars to the circuit of the whole creation, the whole creation itself to the infinite space that is every where diffused about it: or when the imagination works downward and confiders the bulk of a human body in respect of an animal a hundred times lefs than a mite, the particular limbs of fuch an animal, the different fprings which actuate the limbs, the fpirits which fet the fprings a going, and the proportionable minutenefs of thefe feveral parts, before they have arrived at their full growth and perfection, but if, after all this, we take the leaft particle of thefe animal fpirits, and confider its capacity of being wrought into the world that fhall contain within thofe narrow dimenfions a heaven and earth, stars and planets and every different fpecies of living creatures, in the fame analogy and proportion they bear to each other in our own univerfe; fuch a speculation, by reafon of its nicety, appears ridiculous to those who have not turned their thoughts that way, though at the fame time it is founded on no lefs than the evidence of a demonftration. Nay, we may yet carry it farther, and difcover in the fmalleft particle of this little world a new inexhausted fund of matter, capable of being spun out into another universe. I have dwelt the longer on this fubject, because I think it may fhew us the proper limits, as well as the defectiveness of our imagination; how it is confined to a very fmall quantity of fpace; and immediately ftopt in its operations, when it endeavours to take in any thing that is very great or very little. Let a man try to conceive the different bulk of an animal, which is twenty, from another which is an hundred times lefs than a mite, or to compare in his thoughts a length of a thoufand diameters of the earth, with that of a million, and he will quickly find that he has no different measures in his mind adjusted to fuch extraordinary degrees of grandeur or minutenefs. The understanding, indeed, opens an infinite space on every fide of us, but the imagination, after a few faint efforts, is immediately at a stand, and finds herself fwallowed ip in the immenfity of the void that furrounds Our reafon can puríue a particle of matter hrough an infinite variety of divifions, but the ancy foon lofes fight of it, and feels in itself a ind of chafin, that wants to be filled with latter of a more fenfible bulk. We can neither iden nor contract the faculty to the dimensions either extreme. The object is too big for ir capacity, when we would comprehend the cumference of a world, and dwindles into thing, when we endeavour after the idea of an t. TH ADDISON. HE pleafures of the imagination are not wholly confined to fuch particular authors as are converfant in material objects, but are often to be met with among the polite mafters of morality, criticism, and other fpeculations abftracted from matter, who, though they do not directly treat of the visible parts of nature, often draw from them their fimilitudes, metaphors, and allegories. By these allufions a truth in the understanding is as it were reflected by the imagination; we are able to fee fomething like colour and fhape in a notion, and to difcover a fcheme of thoughts traced out upon matter. And here the mind receives a great deal of fatiffaction, and has two of its faculties gratified at the fame time, while the fancy is bufy in copying after the understanding, and tranfcribing ideas out of the intellectual world into the material. The great art of a writer fhews itself in the choice of pleasing allufions, which are generally to be taken from the great or beautiful works of art or nature; for though whatever is new or uncommon is apt to delight the imagination, the chief defign of an allufion being to illuftrate and explain the paffages of an author, it should be always borrowed from what is more known and common, than the paffages which are to be explained. Allegories, when well chefen, are like so many tracks of light in a difcourfe, that make every thing about them clear and beautiful. A noble metaphor, when it is placed to an advantage, cafts a kind of glory round it, and darts a luftre through a whole fentence. Thefe different kinds of allufion are but so many different manners of fimilitude, and, that they may please the imagination, the likenefs ought to be very exact, or very agreeable, as we love to fee a picture where the refemblance is juft, or the pofture and air graceful. But we often find eminent writers very faulty in this refpect; great scholars are apt to fetch their comparisons and allufions from the fciences in which they are most converfant, fo that a man may fee the compass of their learning in a treatise on the most indifferent fubject. I have read a difcourfe upon love, which none but a profound chymift could understand, and have heard many a fermon that should only have been preached before a congregation of Cartefians. On the contrary, your men of business usually have recourfe to fuch infances as are too mean and familiar. They are for drawing the reader into a game of chefs or tennis, or for leading him from shop to fhop in the cant of particular |