imagination of all the good poets that have of the imagination are of a wider and more Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, has shown If I were to name a poet that is a perfect master in all these arts of working on the imagination, I think Milton may pass for one: and if his Paradise Lost falls short of the Æneid or Iliad in this respect, 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 stately palace built of brick, where one may see architecture in as great a perfection as one of marble, though the materials are of a coarser nature. But to consider it only as it regards our present subject: What can be conceived greater than the battle of angels, the majesty of Messiah, the stature and behaviour of Satan and his peers? What more beautiful than Pandemonium, Paradise, Heaven, Angels, Adam and Eve? What more strange than the creation of the world, the several metamorphoses of the fallen angels, and the surprising adventures their leader meets with in his search after Paradise? No other subject could have furnished a poet with scenes so proper to strike the imagination, as no other poet could have painted those scenes in more strong and lively colours. O. But if the description of what is little, common, or deformed, be acceptable to the imagination, the description of what is great, surprising, or beautiful is much more so; because here we are not only delighted with comparing the representation with the original, but are highly pleased with the original itself. Most readers, I believe, are more charmed with Milton's description of Paradise, than of hell; they are both, per haps, equally perfect in their kind; but in the one the brimstone and sulphur are not so refreshing to the imagination, as the beds of flowers and the wilderness of sweets in the other. There is yet another circumstance which recommends a description more than all the rest; and that is, if it represents to us such objects as are apt to raise a secret fer ment in the mind of the reader, and to work with violence upon his passions. For, in this case, we are at once warmed and enlightened, so that the pleasure becomes more universal, and is several ways quali fied to entertain us. Thus in painting, it is pleasant to look on the picture of any face where the resemblance is hit; but the pleasure increases if it be the picture of a face that is beautiful; and is still greater, if the beauty be softened with an air of melan choly or sorrow. The two leading passions which the more serious parts of poetry en deavour to stir up in us, are terror and pity. ON THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION. And here, by the way, one would wonder Contents.-Why any thing that is unpleasant to behold how it comes to pass that such passions as pleases the imagination when well described. Why are very unpleasant at all other times, are the imagination receives a more exquisite pleasure from the description of what is great, now, or beauti. Very agreeable when excited by proper ful. The pleasure still heightened, if what is described descriptions. It is not strange, that we raises passion in the mind. Disagreeable passions should take delight in such passages as are pleasing when raised by apt descriptions. Why ter- apt to produce hope, joy, admiration, love, never rise in the mind without an inward or the like emotions in us, because they pleasure which attends them. But how Comes it to pass, that we should take delight in being terrified or dejected by a description, when we find so much uneasiness in No. 418.] Monday, June 30, 1712. PAPER VIII. ror and grief are pleasing to the mind when excited What liberties are allowed them. -ferat et rubus asper amomum. Virg. Ecl. iii. 89. The rugged thorn shall bear the fragrant rose. THE pleasures of these secondary views he fear or grief which we receive from any ther occasion? If we consider, therefore, the nature of his pleasure, we shall find that it does not rise so properly from the description of hat is terrible, as from the reflection we nake on ourselves at the time of reading it. When we look on such hideous objects, we re nct a little pleased to think we are in o danger of them.* We consider them at he same time, as dreadful and harmless; so at the more frightful appearance they nake, the greater is the pleasure we reeive from the sense of our own safety. In hort, we look upon the terrors of a descripon with the same curiosity and satisfaction hat we survey a dead monster. -Informe cadaver rotrahitur: nequeunt expleri corda tuendo -They drag him from his den. beautiful than the eye ever saw, and is still sensible of some defect in what it has seen; on this account it is the part of a poet to humour the imagination in our own notions, by mending and perfecting nature where he describes a reality, and by adding greater beauties than are put together in nature, where he describes a fiction. He is not obliged to attend her in the slow advances which she makes from one season to another, or to observe her conduct in the successive 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 something to render it the more agreeable. His rosetrees, woodbines, and jasmines, may flower together, and his beds be covered at the same time with lilies, violets, and amaranths. His soil is not restrained to any particular set 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 spices, he can quickly command sun enough to raise it. If all this will not furnish out an agreeable scene, he can make several new species of flowers, with richer scents and higher colours than any that grow in the gardens of nature. His concerts of birds may be as full and harmoniIn the like manner, when we read of tor-ous, and his woods as thick and gloomy as ments, wounds, deaths, and the like dismal he pleases. He is at no more expense in a accidents, our pleasure does not flow so long vista than a short one, and can as easily properly from the grief which such melan-throw his cascades from a precipice of half holy descriptions give us, as from the a mile high, as from one of twenty yards. ecret comparison which we make between He has the choice of the winds, and can urselves and the person who suffers. Such epresentations teach us to set a just value pon our own condition, and make us prize ur good fortune, which exempts us from he like calamities. This is, however, such kind of pleasure as we are not capable of eceiving, when we see a person actually ying under the tortures that we meet with na description; because, in this case, the bject presses too close upon our senses, and It is for the same reason that we are deighted with the reflecting upon dangers hat are past, or in looking on a precipice t a distance, which would fill us with a lifferent kind of horror, if we saw it hangng over our heads. turn the course of his rivers in all the variety of meanders that are most delightful to the reader's imagination. In a word, he ha: the modelling of nature in his own hands, and may give her what charms he pleases, provided he does not reform her too much, and run into absurdities by endeavouring to excel. PAPER IX. ears so hard upon us, that it does not give No. 419.] Tuesday, July 1, 1712. But because the mind of man requires *Suave mare dulci turbantibus æquora ventis,' &c. Luer O. ON THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION. Contents. Of that kind of poetry which Mr. Dryden calls the fairy way of writing. How a poet should be qualified for it. The pleasures of the imagination that arise from it. In this respect why the moderns excel the ancients. Why the English excel the mo derns. Who the best among the English. Of emblematical persons. -Mentis gratissimus error. Hor. 2. Ep. ii. Lib. 2. 140. The sweet delusion of a raptur'd mind. THERE is a kind of writing wherein the poet quite loses sight of nature, and entertains his reader's imagination with the characters and actions of such persons as have many of them no existence but what he bestows on them. Such are fairies, witches, magicians, demons, and departed spirits. This Mr. Dryden calls the fairy way of try among them; for, indeed, almost the There is a very odd turn of thought re- Sylvis deducti caveant, me judice, fauni, Hor. Ars Poet. v. 244. Let not the wood-born satyr fondly sport the darkness and superstition of later ages, when pious frauds were made use of to amuse mankind, and frighten them into a sense of their duty. Our forefathers looked upon nature with more reverence and hor ror, before the world was enlightened by learning and philosophy; and loved to astonish themselves with the apprehensions of witchcraft, prodigies, charms, and enchantments. There was not a village in England that had not a ghost in it, the church-yards were all haunted; every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it; and there was scarce a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit. Among all the poets of this kind our English are much the best, by what I have yet seen; whether it be that we abound with more stories of this nature, or that the genius of our country is fitter for this sart of poetry. For the English are naturally fanciful, and very often disposed, by that gloominess and melancholy of temper which is so frequent in our nation, to many wild notions and visions, to which others are not so liable. Among the English, Shakspeare has incomparably excelled all others. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in so great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch this weak superstitious part of his reader's imagination; and made him capable of succeeding, where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his own genius. There is something so wild, and yet so solemn, in the speeches of his ghosts, fairies, witches, and the like ima ginary persons, that we cannot forbear thinking them natural, though we have no rule by which to judge of them, and must confess if there are such beings in the world, it looks highly probable they should talk and act as he has represented them. These descriptions raise a pleasing kind of horror in the mind of the reader, and amuse his imagination with the strangeness and novelty of the persons who are represented to them. They bring up into our memory the stories we have heard in our childhood, and favour those secret terrors and apprehensions to which the mind of man is naturally subject. We are pleased with surveying the different habits and behaviours of foreign countries: how much more must we be delighted and surprised There is another sort of imaginary bewhen we are led, as it were, into a new ings, that we sometimes meet with among creation, and see the person and manners the poets, when the author represents any of another species! Men of cold fancies passion, appetite, virtue or vice, under a and philosophical dispositions, object to this visible shape, and makes it a person or an kind of poetry, that it has not probability actor in his poem. Of this nature are the enough to affect the imagination. But to descriptions of Hunger and Envy in Ovid, this it may be answered, that we are sure, of Fame in Virgil, and of Sin and Death in in general, there are many intellectual Milton. We find a whole creation of the beings in the world besides ourselves, and like shadowy persons in Spencer, who had several species of spirits, who are subject an admirable talent in representations of to different laws and economies from those this kind. I have discoursed of these em of mankind: when we see, therefore, any blematical persons in former papers, and of these represented naturally, we cannot shall therefore only mention them in this look upon the representation as altogether place. Thus we see how many ways po impossible; nay, many are prepossessed try addresses itself to the imagination, as it with such false opinions, as dispose them to has not only the whole circle of nature for believe these particular delusions; at least its province, but makes new worlds of its we have all heard so many pleasing relations own, shows us persons who are not to be in favour of them, that we do not care for found in being, and represents even the fa seeing through the falsehood, and willingly culties of the soul, with the several virtues give ourselves up to so agreeable an im- and vices, in a sensible shape and character posture. I shall in my two following papers, consiThe ancients have not much of this poe-der, in general, how other kinds of writing qualified to please the imagination; with | veral planets that lie within its neighbourich I intend to conclude this essay. 420.] Wednesday, July 2, 1712. PAPER X. O. THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION. tents. What authors please the imagination. Who ave nothing to do with fiction. How history pleases e imagination. How the authors of the new philoOphy please the imagination. The bounds and deects of the imagination. Whether these defects are sential to the imagination. -Quocunque volunt mentem auditoris agunto. Hor. Ars Poct. v. 100. and raise men's passions to what height they will. Roscommon. As the writers in poetry and fiction Tow their several materials from outard objects, and join them together at eir own pleasure, there are others who e obliged to follow nature more closely, d to take entire scenes out of her. Such e historians, natural philosophers, trallers, geographers, and, in a word, all o describe visible objects of a real ex ence. hood, we are filled with a pleasing astonishment, to see so many worlds hanging one above another, and sliding round their axles in such an amazing pomp and solemnity. If, after this, we contemplate those wild. fields of æther that reach in height as far as from Saturn to the fixed stars, and run abroad almost to an infinitude, our imagination finds its capacity filled with so immense a prospect; and puts itself upon the stretch to comprehend it. But if we yet rise higher, and consider the fixed stars as so many vast oceans of flame, that are each of them attended with a different set of planets, and still discover new firmaments and new lights that are sunk farther in those unfathomable depths of æther, so as not to be seen by the strongest of our telescopes, we are lost in such a labyrinth of suns and worlds, and confounded with the immensity and magnificence of nature. Nothing is more pleasant to the fancy, than to enlarge itself by degrees, in its contemplation of the various proportions which its several objects bear to each other, when it compares the body of man to the bulk of the whole earth, the earth to the It is the most agreeable talent of an his- circle it describes round the sun, that circle ian to be able to draw up his armies to the sphere of the fixed stars, the sphere d fight his battles in proper expressions, of the fixed stars to the circuit of the whole set before our eyes the divisions, cabals, creation, the whole creation itself to the infijealousies of great men, to lead us step nite space that is every where diffused about step into the several actions and events it; or when the imagination works downward, his history. We love to see the subject and considers the bulk of a human body in folding itself by just degrees, and break-respect of an animal a hundred times less Supon us insensibly, so that we may be than a mite, the particular limbs of such an pt in a pleasing suspense, and have time animal, the different springs that actuate en us to raise our expectations, and to the limbs, the spirits which set the springs le with one of the parties concerned in a-going, and the proportionable minuteness e relation. I confess this shows more the of these several parts, before they have than the veracity of the historian; but arrived at their full growth and perfection; m only to speak of him as he is qualified but if, after all this, we take the least parplease the imagination; and in this re-ticle of these animal spirits, and consider ect Livy has, perhaps, excelled all who its capacity of being wrought into a world ent before him, or have written since his that shall contain within those narrow dine. He describes every thing in so lively mensions a heaven and earth, stars and manner that his whole history is an ad- planets, and every different species of livrable picture, and touches on such pro-ing creatures, in the same analogy and r circumstances in every story, that his ader becomes a kind of spectator, and ls in himself all the variety of passions ich are correspondent to the several Tts of the relations. But proportion they bear to each other in our own universe; such a speculation, by reason of its nicety, appears ridiculous to those who have not turned their thoughts that way, though at the same time it is founded on no less than the evidence of a demonstration. Nay, we may yet carry it farther, and discover in the smallest 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 subject, because I think it may show us the proper limits, as well as the defectiveness of our imagination; how it is confined to a very small quantity of space, and immediately stopt in its operation, when it endeavours to take in any thing that is very great or * Vid. ed. in folio. very little. Let a man try to conceive the them their similitudes, metaphors, and al- The great art of a writer shows itself in the choice of pleasing allusions, 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 design of an allusion being to illustrate and explain the passages of an author, it should be always borrowed from what is more known and common than the passages which are to be explained. Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a discourse, that make every thing about them clear and It is possible this defect of imagination beautiful. A noble metaphor, when it is may not be in the soul itself, but as it acts placed to an advantage, casts a kind of glory in conjunction with the body. Perhaps round it, and darts a lustre through a whole there may not be room in the brain for such sentence. These different kinds of allusion a variety of impressions, or the animal are but so many different manners of similispirits may be incapable of figuring them tude; and that they may please the imagi in such a manner as is necessary to excite so nation, the likeness ought to be very exact very large or very minute ideas. However or very agreeable, as we love to see a picit be, we may well suppose that beings of a ture where the resemblance is just, or the higher nature very much excel us in this posture and air graceful. But we often find respect, as it is probable the soul of man eminent writers very faulty in this respect; will be infinitely more perfect hereafter in great scholars are apt to fetch their com this faculty, as well as in all the rest; inso-parisons and allusions from the sciences in much that, perhaps, the imagination will which they are most conversant, so that a be able to keep pace with the understand-man may see the compass of their learning ing, and to form in itself distinct ideas of all the different modes and quantities of space. No. 421.] Thursday, July 3, 1712. PAPER XI. O. Ignotis errare locis, ignota videre, Flumina gaudebat; studio minuente laborem. He sought fresh fountains in a foreign soil: THE pleasures of the imagination are not in a treatise on the most indifferent subject. I have read a discourse upon love, which none but a profound chymist could under stand, and have heard many a sermon that should only have been preached before a congregation of Cartesians. On the contrary, your men of business usually have recourse to such instances as are too mean and familiar. They are for drawing the reader into a game of chess or tennis, or for leading him from shop to shop, in the cant of particular trades and employments. It variety of very agreeable allusions in both is certain, there may be found an infinite these kinds; but, for the generality, the most entertaining ones lie in the works of nature, which are obvious to all capacities, and more delightful than what is to be found in arts and sciences. It is this talent of affecting the imagina tion that gives an embellishment to good sense, and makes one man's composition more agreeable than another's. It sets off all writings in general, but is the very life and highest perfection of poetry, where it shines in an eminent degree: it has pre served several poems for many ages, that have nothing else to recommend them; and BOULDER |