tus, though his life was a continued scene of the most important actions, he found time not only to study, but to compose a Treatise upon Virtue.

When these were gone, and the worst of times succeeded, Thrasea Pætus, and Helvidius Priscus, were at the same period both senators and philosophers; and appear to have supported the severest trials of tyrannic oppression, by the manly system of the Stoic moral. The best emperor whom the Romans, or perhaps any nation, ever knew, Marcus Antoninus, was involved, during his whole life, in business of the last consequence; sometimes conspiracies forming, which he was obliged to dissipate; formidable wars arising at other times, when he was obliged to take the field. Yet during none of these periods did he forsake philosophy, but still persisted in meditation, and in committing his thoughts to writing, during moments gained by stealth from the hurry of courts and campaigns.

If we descend to later ages, and search our own country, we shall find Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Milton, Algernon Sidney, Sir William Temple, and many others, to have been all of them eminent in public life, and yet at the same time conspicuous for their speculations and literature. If we look abroad, examples of like characters will occur in other countries. Grotius, the poet, the critic, the philosopher, and the divine, was employed by the court of Sweden as ambassador to France; and De Witt, that acute but unfortunate statesman, that pattern of parsimony and political accomplishments, was an able mathematician, wrote upon the elements of Curves, and applied his algebra with accuracy to the trade and commerce of his country.

And so much in defence of Philosophy, against those who may possibly undervalue her, because they have succeeded without her; those I mean (and it must be confest they are many) who, having spent their whole lives in what Milton calls the "busy hum of men," have acquired to themselves habits of amazing efficacy, unassisted by the helps of science and erudition. To such the retired student may appear an awkward being, because they want a just standard to measure his merit.

But let them recur to the bright examples before alleged; let them remember that these were eminent in their own way; were men of action and business; men of the world; and yet did they not disdain to cultivate philosophy, nay, were many of them perhaps indebted to her for the splendour of their active character.

This reasoning has a farther end. It justifies me in the address of these philosophical arrangements, as your Lordship* has been distinguished in either character, I mean in your public one, as well as in your private. Those who know the history of our foreign transactions, know the reputation that you acquired in Germany, by negotiations of the last importance; and those who are honoured with your nearer friendship, know that you can speculate as well as act, and can employ your pen both with elegance and instruction.

It may not perhaps be unentertaining to your Lordship to see in what manner the Preceptor of Alexander the Great arranged his pupil's ideas, so that they might not cause confusion, for want of accurate disposition.' It may be thought also a fact worthy your notice, that he became acquainted with this method from the venerable Pythagoras, who, unless he drew it from remoter sources, to us unknown, was, perhaps, himself its inventor and original teacher. Harris.

§ 214. The Progressions of Art disgust

ful, the Completion beautiful.

Fables relate that Venus was wedded to Vulcan, the goddess of beauty to the god of deformity. The tale, as some explain it, gives a double representation of art; Vulcan shewing us the progressions of art, and Venus the completions. The progressions, such as the hewing of stone, the grinding of colours, the fusion of metals, these all of them are laborious, and many times disgustful; the completions, such as the temple, the palace, the picture, the statue, these all of them are beauties, and justly call for admiration.

Now if logic be one of those arts, which help to improve human reason, it must necessarily be an art of the progressive character; an art which, not ending with itself, has a view to something farther. If then, in the speculations upon

§ 215. On Conversation. Conversation does not require the same merit to please that writing does. The human soul is endued with a kind of natural expression, which it does not acquire. The expression I speak of consists in the significant modulations and tones of voice, accompanied, in unaffected people, by a propriety of gesture. This native language was not intended by nature to represent the transitory ideas that come by the senses to the imagination, but the passions of the mind and its emotions only; therefore modulation and gesture give life and passion to words; their mighty force in oratory is very conspicuous: but although their effects be milder in conversation, yet they are very sensible; they agitate the soul by a variety of gentle sensations, and help to form that sweet charm that makes the most trifling subjects en gaging. This fine expression, which is not learned, is not so much taken notice of as it deserves, because it is much superseded by the use of artificial and acquired language. The modern system of philosophy has also concurred to shut it out from our reflections.

It is in conversation people put on all their graces, and appear in the lustre of good-breeding. It is certain, good-breeding, that sets so great a distinction between individuals of the same species, creates nothing new, (I mean a good education) but only draws forth into prospect, with skill and address, the agreeable dispositions and sentiments that lay latent in the mind. You may call good-breeding artificial; but it is like the art of a gardener, under whose hand a barren tree puts forth its own bloom, and is enriched with its specific fruit. It is scarce possible to conceive any scene so truly agreeable, as an assembly of people elaborately educated, who assume a character superior to ordinary life, and support it with ease and familiarity.

The heart is won in conversation by its own passions. Its pride, its grandeur, its affections, lay it open to the enchantment of an insinuating address. Flattery

is a gross charm, but who is proof against a gentle and yielding disposition, that infers your superiority with a delicacy so fine, that you cannot see the lines of which it is composed? Generosity, disinterestedness, a noble of truth that will not deceive, a feeling of the distresses of others, and greatness of soul, inspires us with admiration along with love, and takes our affections as it were by storm; but, above all, we are seduced by a view of the tender and affectionate passions; they carry a soft infection, and the heart is betrayed to them by its own forces. If we are to judge from symptoms, the soul that engages us so powerfully by its reflected glances, is an object of infinite beauty. I observed before, that the modulations of the human voice that express the soul, move us powerfully; and indeed we are affected by the natural emotions of the mind expressed in the simplest language: in short, the happy art, that, in conversation and the intercourse of life, lays hold upon our affections, is but a just address to the engaging passions in the human breast. But this syren power, ke beauty, is the gift of nature. Soft pleasing speech and graceful outward show, No arts can gain them, but the gods bestow.

POPE'S HOM

From the various combinations of the several endearing passions, and lofty sentiments, arise the variety of pleasing characters that beautify human society.

There is a different source of pleasure in conversation from what I have spoken of, called wit; which diverts the world so much, that I cannot venture to omit it, although delicacy and a refined taste hesitate a little, and will not allow its value to be equal to its currency. Wit deals largely in allusion and whimsical similitudes; its countenance is always double, and it unites the true and the fantastic by a nice gradation of colouring that cannot be perceived. You observe that I am only speaking of the ready wit of conversation.

Wit is properly called in to support a conversation where the heart or affections are not concerned; and its proper business is to relieve the mind from solitary inattention, where there is no room to move it by passion; the mind's eye, when disengaged, is diverted by being fixed upon a vapour, that dances, as it were, on the surface of the imagination, and continually alters its aspect: the motley

image, whose comic side we had only time to survey, is too unimportant to be attentively considered, and luckily vanishes before we can view it on every side. Shallow folks, expect that those who diverted them in conversation, and made happy bon mots, ought to write well; and imagine that they themselves were made to laugh by the force of genius: but they are generally disappointed when they see the admired character descend upon paper. The truth is, the frivolous turn and habit of a comic companion, is almost dia. metrically opposite to true genius, whose natural exercise is deep and slow-paced reflection. You may as well expect that a man should, like Cæsar, form consistent schemes for subduing the world, and employ the principal part of his time in catching flies. I have often heard people express a surprise, that Swift and Addison, the two greatest masters of humour of the last age, were easily put out of countenance, as if pun, mimicry, or repartee, were the offspring of genius.

Whatever similitude may be between humour in writing, and humour in con, versation, they are generally found to require different talents. Humour in writing is the offspring of reflection, and is by nice touches and labour brought to wear the negligent air of nature; whereas, wit in conversation is an enemy to reflection, and glows brightest when the imagination flings off the thought the moment it arises, in its genuine new-born dress. Men a little elevated by liquor, seem to have a peculiar facility at striking out the capricious and fantastic images that raise our mirth; in fact, what we generally admire in sallies of wit, is the nicety with which they touch upon the verge of folly, indiscretion, or malice, while at the same time they preserve thought, subtlety, and good humour; and what we laugh at is the motley appearance, whose whimsical consistency we cannot account for.

People are pleased at wit for the same reason that they are fond of diversion of any kind, not for the worth of the thing, but because the mind is not able to bear an intense train of thinking; and yet the ceasing of thought is insufferable, or rather impossible. In such an uneasy dilemma, the unsteady excursions of wit give the mind its natural action, without fatigue, and relieve it delightfully, by employing the imagination without requiring any reflection, Those who have an eter

There are few who have not felt the charms of music, and acknowledged its expressions to be intelligible to the heart. It is a language of delightful sensations, that is far more eloquent than words: it breathes to the ear the clearest intimations; but how it was learned, to what origin we owe it, or what is the meaning of some of its most affecting strains, we know not.

We feel plainly that music touches and gently agitates the agreeable and sublime passions; that it wraps us in melancholy, and elevates in joy; that it dissolves and inflames; that it melts us in tenderness, and rouses to rage: but its strokes are so fine and delicate, that, like a tragedy, even the passions that are wounded please; its sorrows are charming, and its rage heroic and delightful; as people feel the particular passions with different degrees of force, their taste of harmony must proportionably vary. Music then is a language directed to the passions; but the rudest passions put on a new nature and become pleasing in harmony: let me add, also, that it awakens some passions which we perceive not in ordinary life, Particularly the most elevated sensation of music arises from a confused perception of ideal or visionary beauty and rap, ture, which is sufficiently perceivable to fire the imagination, but not clear enough to become an object of knowledge. This shadowy beauty the mind attempts, with a languishing curiosity, to collect into a distinct object of view and comprehension; but it sinks and escapes, like the dissolving ideas of a delightful dream, that are neither within the reach of the memory, nor yet totally fled. The noblest charm of music then, though real and affecting, seems too confused and fluid to be collected into a distinct idea, Harmony is always understood by the crowd, and almost always mistaken by musicians; who are, with hardly any exception, servile followers of the taste of mode, and who, having expended much time and pains on the mechanic and practical part, lay a stress on the dexterities of hand, which yet have no real value, but as they serve to produce those collections of sound that move the passions. The pres

Y

sent Italian taste for music is exactly correspondent to the taste of tragi-comedy, that about a century ago gained ground upon the stage. The musicians of the present day are charmed at the union they form between the grave and the fantastic, and at the surprising transitions they make between extremes, while every hearer who has the least remainder of the taste of nature left, is shocked at the strange jargon. If the same taste should prevail in paint ing, we must soon expect to see the woman's head, a horse's body, and a fish's tail, united by soft gradations, greatly ad mired at our public exhibitions. Musical gentlemen should take particular care to preserve in its full vigour and sensibility their original natural taste, which alone feels and discovers the true beauty of music.

If Milton, Shakspeare, or Dryden, had been born with the same genius and inspiration for music as for poetry, and had passed through the practical part without corrupting the natural taste, or blending with it prepossession in favour of the slights and dexterities of hand, then would their notes be tuned to passions and to sentiments as natural and expressive as the tones and modulations of the voice in discourse. The music and the thought would not make different expressions: the hearers would only think impetuously; and the effect of the music would be to give the ideas a tumultuous violence and divine impulse upon the mind. Any person conversant with the classic poets, sees instantly that the passionate power of music I speak of, was perfectly understood and practised by the ancients; that the muses of the Greeks always sung, and their song was the echo of the subject, which swelled their poetry into enthusiasm and rapture. An inquiry into the nature and merits of the ancient music, and a comparison thereof with modern composition, by a person of poetic genius and an admirer of harmony, who is free from shackles of practice, and the prejudices of the mode, aided by the countenance of a few men of rank, of elevated and true taste, would probably lay the present half Gothic mode of music in ruins, like those towers of whose little laboured ornaments

it is an exact picture, and restore the Grecian taste of passionate harmony once more, to the delight and wonder of mankind. But as, from the disposition of things, and the force of fashion, we can

not hope in our time to rescue the sacred lyre, and see it put into the hands of men of genius, I can only recall you to your own natural feeling of harmony, and observe to you, that its emotions are not found in the laboured, fantastic and surprising compositions that form the modern style of music: but you meet them in some few pieces that are the growth of wild, unvitiated taste: you discover them in the swelling sounds that wrap us in imaginary grandeur; in those plaintive notes that make us in love with woe; in the tones that utter the lover's sighs, and fluctuate the breast with gentle pain; in the noble strokes that coil up the courage and fury of the soul, or that lull it in confused visions of joy: in short, in those affecting strains that find their way to the inward recesses of the heart:

Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.

MILTON. Usher.

$217. On Sculpture and Painting.

Sculpture and painting have their standard in nature; and their principles differ only according to the different materials made use of in these arts. The variety of his colours, and the flat surface on which the painter is at liberty to raise his magic objects, give him a vast scope for ornament, variety, harmony of parts, and opposition, to please the mind, and divert it from too strict an examination. The sculptor being so much confined, has nothing to move with but beauty, passion, and force of attitude; sculpture therefore admits of no mediocrity; its works are either intolerable, or very fine. In Greece, the finishing of a single statue was often the work of many years.

Sculpture and painting take their merit from the same spirit that poetry does; a justness, a grandeur, and force of expression; and their principal objects are, the sublime, the beautiful, and the passionate. Painting, on account of its great latitude, approaches also very near to the variety of poetry; in general their principles vary only according to the different materials of each.

Poetry is capable of taking a series of successive facts, which comprehend a whole action from the beginning. It puts the passions in motion gradually, and winds them up by successive efforts, that all conduce to the intended effect; the mind could never be agitated so violently,

if the storm had not come on by degrees: besides, language, by its capacity of representing thoughts, of forming the communication of mind with mind, and describing emotions, takes in several great, awful, and passionate ideas that colours cannot represent: but the painter is confined to objects of vision, or to one point or instant of time; and is not to bring into view any events which did not, or at least might not happen, at one and the same instant. The chief art of the history-painter, is to hit upon a point of time, that unites the whole successive action in one view, and strikes out the emotion you are desirous of raising. Some painters have had the power of preserving the traces of a receding passion, or the mixed, disturbed emotions of the mind, without impairing the principal passion. The Medea of Timomachus was a miracle of this kind; her wild love, her rage, and her maternal pity, were all poured forth to the eye, in one portrait. From this mixture of passions, which is in nature, the murderess appeared dreadfully affecting.

It is very necessary, for the union of design in painting, that one principal figure appear eminently in view, and that all the rest be subordinate to it: that is, the passion or attention of that principal object should give a cast to the whole piece: for instance, if it be a wrestler, or a courser in the race, the whole scene should not only be active, but the attentions and passions of the rest of the figures should all be directed by that object. If it be a fisherman over the stream, the whole scene must be silent and meditative; if ruins, a bridge, or waterfall, even the living persons must be subordinate, and the traveller should gaze and look back with wonder. This strict union and concord is rather more necessary in painting than in poetry; the reason is, painting is almost palpably a deception, and requires the utmost skill in selecting a vicinity of probable ideas, to give it the air of reality and nature. For this reason also nothing strange, wonderful, or shocking to credu lity, ought to be admitted in paintings that are designed after real life.

The principal art of the landscapepainter lies in selecting those objects of view that are beautiful or great, provided there be a propriety and a just neighbourhood preserved in the assemblage, along with a careless distribution that solicits

your eye to the principal object where it rests; in giving such a glance or confused view of those that retire out of prospect, as to raise curiosity, and create in the imagination affecting ideas that do not appear; and in bestowing as much life and action as possible, without overcharging the piece. A landscape is enlivened by putting the animated figures into action; by flinging over it the cheerful aspect which the sun bestows, either by a proper disposition of shade, or by the appearances that beautify his rising or setting; and by a judicious prospect of water, which always conveys the ideas of motion: a few dishevelled clouds have the same effect, but with somewhat less vivacity.

The excellence of portrait-painting and sculpture springs from the same principles that affect us in life; they are not the persons who perform at a comedy or a tragedy we go to see with so much pleasure, but the passions and emotions they display: in like manner, the value of statues and pictures rises in proportion to the strength and clearness of the expression of the passions, and to the peculiar and distinguishing air of character. Great painters almost always choose a face to exhibit the passions in. If you recollect what I said on beauty, you will easily conceive the reason why the agreeable passions are most lively in a beautiful face; beauty is the natural vehicle of the agreeable passions. For the same reason the tempestuous passions appear strongest in a fine face; it suffers the most violent derangement by them. To which we may add, upon the same principle, that dignity or courage cannot be mixed in a very ill-favoured countenance; and that the painter, after exerting his whole skill, finds in their stead pride and terror. These observations, which have been often made, serve to illustrate our thoughts on beauty. Besides the strict propriety of nature, sculpture and figurepainting is a kind of description, which, like poetry, is under the direction of genius; that, while it preserves nature, sometimes, in a fine flight of fancy, throws an ideal splendour over the figures that never existed in real life. Such is the sublime and celestial character that breathes over the Apollo Belvedere, and the inexpressible beauties that dwell upon the Venus of Medici, and seem to shed an illumination around her. This superior beauty must be varied with propriety, as well as the passions; the elegance of Juno must