344. In tragedy, vision is the language of the most violent passion, which conjures up spectres, and approaches to insanity. Example 1. The author of Phædra and Hyppolitus makes the former address the latter in the following strain: "Then why this strain? Come, let us plunge together. Sec, Hell sets wide its adamantine gates! See, through the sable gates, the black Cocytus, How huge Megara stalks! Now, now, she drags me to the bar of Minos." 2. The horrors of the mind of Macbeth, after murdering the king and Banquo, are artfully and forcibly painted by the same figure : "Methought I heard a voice Cry, Sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep." 3. He is still more violently distracted, and fancies he sees the ghost of the murdered king: "Avaunt, and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee; thy bones are marrowless, In those eyes which thou dost stare with. Hence, horrible shadow; unreal mockery, hence." 345. IRONY. When we express ourselves in a manner contrary to our thoughts, not with a view to deceive, but to add force to our observations, we are then said to speak ironically. Illus. Irony turns things into ridicule, in a peculiar manner; it consists in laughing at a man, under the disguise of appearing to praise or speak well of him. Example. "By these methods, in a few weeks, there starts up many a writer, capable of managing the profoundest and most universal subjects. For what though his head be empty, provided his commonplace book be full? And if you will bate him but the circumstances of method, and style, and grammar, and invention; allow him but the common privileges of transcribing from others, and digressing from himself, as often as he shall see occasion, he will desire no more ingredients towards fitting up a treatise, that shall make a very comely figure on a bookseller's shelf, there to be preserved neat and clean, for a long eternity, adorned with the heraldry of its title, fairly described on the label; never thumbed or greased by students, nor bound to everlasting chains of darkness in a library; but when the fulness of time is come, shall happily undergo the trial of purgatory, in order to ascend the sky."* 346. The subjects of irony, are vices and follies of all kinds; and this mode of exposing them is often more effectual than serious reasoning. Illus. The gravest persons have not disdained to use this figure on proper occasions. Example 1. Thus Elijah challenged the priests of Baal to prove the * Tale of a Tub, Sect. 7. truth of their deity. "Cry aloud, for he is a god: either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awakened." 2. To reprove a person for his negligence, one might say, “ You have taken great care indeed." 347. Exclamations and irony are sometimes united. Example. Thus both are united in Cicero's oration for Balbus, where the orator derides his accuser, by saying, "O excellent interpreter of the law! master of antiquity! correcter and amender of our constitution!" Scholium. Besides these, there are several other figures, partly grammatical and partly rhetorical; but as an account of them would be attended with little instruction, and less amusement, we shall refer those who may be led farther into this field, to the writings of the ancient critics, where they will find them explained. It only remains to point out the general principles which should guide our practice in the use of figures; and this is a matter of greater importance, as errors in this article are very common, and as young writers particularly are apt to entertain improper notions of such ornaments. 348. Remember that the first law of good writing, is to attend principally and closely to the matter; and that even the highest ornament is of much inferior consideration. Illus. Good sense, dressed in plain language, will always gain approbation; though ornament may add to its impression, it can never supply its place. A figurative style, without important matter, may dazzle and captivate the untutored mind, and procure a temporary reputation; but reason and truth will, in time, triumph over prejudice and show, and consign to oblivion such ill-supported claims to fame. "Sunt qui neglecto rerum pondere," says Quinctilian," et viribus sententiarum, si vel inania verba in figuras depravarint, summos se judicent artifices; ideoque non desinunt eas nectere; quas sine sententia sectari, tam est ridiculum, quam quærere habitum gestumque sine corpore.' 349. Figures should never have the appearance of being anxiously sought, or of being forced into the service of a writer. Illus. Affectation is the bane of beauty on all occasions, but particularly in composition. If attention to ornament cannot be concealed, it had better be relinquished. The appearance of art will injure reputation more with every reader of taste, than that reputation could be promoted by the most successful use of figures. 350. As figures should not be anxiously sought, so neither should they be lavishly employed. Ornaments of all sorts interfere with elegance, unless applied with taste. In literary compositions they may serve to display a richness of mind, they may impart a gaudy semblance, and may evidence a bold imagination, but they will never strike with the charms of genuine beauty. If, on the other hand, discernment be discovered in the use of them, if they are intro duced with moderation, and communicate real and permanent delight, they will be sure to gain approbation. Illus. The ornaments of writing particularly, are of a nature so refined, that the richest imagination cannot always supply them; nor can the reader continue long to relish them. They are like delicacies of the palate; they sooner pall upon the taste than ordinary food. Figures too closely interspersed, interfere with their own impression; they exhaust the sensibility of the imagination by too frequent exertion; and they excite disgust by attempting too much to please. 351. An author should not attempt figures without being prompted by his imagination. He will readily discover, whether he has received from nature any considerable portion of this lively faculty, by the relish he entertains for works of genius, toward the composition of which she has liberally contributed. Illus. 1. If oratory and poetry attract his attention, and communicate pleasure; if he feel inferior gratification in perusing productions of science, or in abstract inquiry, he has reason to conclude he is endued with some share of the mental power that has adorned the productions to which he is attached. If he feel this faculty so prevalent as to tinge insensibly the colour of his early compositions, he may hope, by proper culture, to attain eminence in the use of ornament. 2. But without such favourable presages, ornament ought not to be attempted. It is not admissible into many reputable species of composition. It is rejected in the greater part of scientific disquisitions. It is despised by some writers and readers; and in every kind of composition, except poetry, good sense, and important matter, conveyed in a simple and natural style, will be entitled to high praise. They will obtain higher praise than can be procured by attempting ornament without success. Finally. Without a genius for figurative language, none should attempt it. Imagination is a power not to be acquired; it must be derived from nature. Its redundances we may prune, its deviations we may correct, its sphere we may enlarge: but the faculty itself we cannot create; and all efforts towards a metaphorical ornamented style, if we are destitute of the genius proper for it, will prove awkward and disgusting. Let us satisfy ourselves, however, by considering that, without this talent, or at least with a very small measure of it, we may both write and speak to advantage. Good sense, as has been said, clear ideas, perspicuity of language, and proper arrangement of words and thoughts, will always command attention. These are, indeed, the foundations of all solid merit both in speaking and writing. Many subjects require nothing more; and those which admit of ornament, admit it only as a secondary requisite. To study and to know our own genius well; to follow nature; to seek to improve, but not to force it; are directions which cannot be too often given to those who desire to excel in the liberal arts. 17* BOOK V. ON THE NATURE OF TASTE AND THE CHAPTER I. TASTE. 352. TASTE is that faculty or power of the human mind, which is always appealed to in disquisitions concerning the merit of discourse and writing; it is the power of receiving pleasure from the beauties of nature and art. Illus. 1. The word taste, under this metaphorical meaning, has borrowed its name from the feeling of that external sense by which we receive and distinguish the pleasures of food. 2. This faculty is common, in some degree, to all men; for the relish of beauty, of one kind or other, belongs to human nature generally. Whatever is orderly, proportioned, grand, harmonious, new or sprightly, pleases alike, but in different degrees, the philosopher and the peasant, the child and the savage. Regular bodies, pictures, and statues, develope in children the rudiments of taste; and savages, who pride themselves in their ornaments of dress, their war and their death songs, their harangues and their orators, evince that they possess, with the attributes of reason and speech, some discernment of beauty, and the principles of taste, deeply founded in the human mind. 353. TASTE is possessed in different degrees by different men. Its feeble glimmerings appear in some; in others, it rises to an acute discernment, and a lively enjoyment of the most refined beauties: the former have but a weak and confused impression of this power, as they relish only beauties of the coarsest kind; the latter have a certain natural and instinctive possession of this faculty, which may be improved by art, and which discovers itself in their powers and pleasures of taste. Obs. This inequality is partly owing to the different frame of our natures, to nicer organs, and finer internal powers, with which one is endowed beyond another; but still more to education, and a higher culture of those talents, which belong only to the ornamental part of life. 354. TASTE is an improvable faculty, and, refined by education, gives to civilized men an immense superiority above barbarians, and, in the same nation, to those who have studied the liberal arts, above the rude and untaught vulgar. Obs. Thus, two classes of men are far removed from each other, in respect to the powers and pleasures of taste; and, for this difference, no other general cause can be assigned, than culture and education. 355. Exercise is the source of improvement in all our faculties, in our bodily, in our mental powers, and even in our external senses. Illus. 1. TOUCH becomes more exquisite in men whose employment leads them to examine the polish of bodies, than it is in others, whose trade engages no such nice exertions. 2. SIGHT, in discerning the minutest objects, acquires a surprising accuracy in microscopical observers, and those who are accustomed to engrave on precious stones. 3. CHEMISTS, by attending to different flavours and tastes of liquors, wonderfully improve the power of distinguishing them and tracing their composition. 356. Placing internal taste, therefore, on the footing of a simple sense, frequent exercise, and curious attention to its proper objects, must, in the first instance, greatly heighten its power. Illus. 1. Thus, nothing is more improvable than that part of taste, which is called an ear for music. At first, the simplest and plainest compositions only are relished. Our pleasure is extended by use and practice, which teach us to relish finer melody, and by degrees enable us to enter into the intricate and compound pleasures of harmony. 2. So an eye for the beauties of painting, is never acquired all at once; nor by him who prefers the Saracen's head upon a sign-post, before the best tabulature of Raphael. It is gradually formed by being conversant among pictures, and studying the works of the best masters. 3. And the man who has cultivated the beauties of regularity, order, and proportion, in architecture, will never prefer a rude Gothic tower, before the finest Grecian building. 357. Precisely in the same manner, with respect to the beauty of composition and discourse, attention to the most approved models, study of the best authors, comparisons of lower and higher degrees of the same beauties, operate towards the refinement of taste. Illus. The sentiment that attends a reader's first acquaintance with works of genius, is obscure and confused. The several excellences or blemishes of the performance which he peruses, cannot be pointed out, because he is at a loss on what to rest his judgment; but allow him |