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of his finest effects. Scott is in his element in feasting. (See his Christmas' in the Introduction to the Sixth Canto of Marmion.) Wine and its alcoholic equivalents in different countries have received poetic celebration in all ages. The effect is somewhat less gross and more inspiring than mere food-nourishment, and leads to the subjective delineation of elated animal spirits.

Pope's 'Timon's Banquet' is sufficiently poetical, viewed as Satire, which was the author's aim.

The hilarious is also allied with the healthy, or mere organic sensation in moments of vigour. Professor Veitch remarks:- This state may be described as one of open-air feeling, and the chief sources of pleasure, and the things principally noted, would naturally be the sunshine and diffused brightness, the breeze, and the general fresh aspect, of earth and sky, connecting itself with a consciousness of life and sensuous enjoyment. This state of feeling is no doubt capable of expression, and readily lends itself as an auxiliary to poetic description; but in itself it is too vague and indefinite to become the subject of pictorial delineation, for a picture essentially demands vivid details.'

The limitation is so far just, that any representation needs to be aided by the external circumstances that either cause it, or fall in harmoniously with it.

Hilarity, as social or gregarious, has many features to lay hold of, in the forms of collective rejoicing, which are in their nature pictorial, and open to all the arts of description suited to the case. (See FEELING, Gregarious, p. 183.)

UTILITY.

The Associations with the Useful have been already adverted to (pp. 8, 65) as important sources of Art pleasure. They draw for aid upon the Beneficent Emotion, while being, in the main, vaguely pleasurable. A large department of Literature is devoted to the great discoveries of Utility, purely for the sake of the interest that they impart. The description of Mining in the 28th chapter of Job (which should be read in the Revised Version) is raised to poetical magnificence, by using fine sense effects, along with the language of power.

What is wanted is to supply adequate expression for the power at work, with splendour in the accompaniments,

if possible, and beneficence in the results; at the same time there must be a careful eschewing of vulgar or unpleasing adjuncts.

Certain phases of Nature lend themselves to the marvellous, from the greatness of the results due to what appear small causes. These are genuine cases of the quality of Strength in its purest form. For example, the simple fact that iron can take on two states, one soft and pliable, the other hard and unyielding, is the foundation of nearly all modern industrial art and civilization.

Again, the law of the expansion of bodies by heat, and their contraction by cold, is subject to a remarkable exception, in the case of water. When cooled to 39°, it contracts no farther, but expands down to the freezing point; so that ice floats on water warmer than itself. But for this fact, the seas in the temperate and polar regions would be a mass of ice, with only a superficial stratum of water in summer.

Compare with these the sensational saying of Carlyle'Not a leaf that rots, but has force in it'. The drift of the remark would seem to be to illustrate Nature's greatness by quoting one of its least dignified operations. Probably the resistance to decay, the keeping of things alive, might be turned to still better account for rousing emotion.

As instrumental to Utility, we may take in Order, Arrangement, Plan, Method, Unity in Multiplicity; all which we regard with pleasure, whether with or without the emotions of Strength on the one hand, and Feeling, as Beneficence, on the other. Yet so valuable are these mighty adjuncts, that they are rarely left unappealed to in the celebration of Utility. Without them, dependence must be placed on the multitude and volume of pleasing associations of the miscellaneous sort, that can be awakened by means of well-chosen allusions.

IMITATION.

The subject of IMITATION, although in the closest alliance with the production of the chief Emotional Qualities, has a perfectly distinct and independent standing. Whatever be the emotion in a poem or other piece of art, we may gain a pleasure from its imitation of some original; and, when the effect is attained in its highest excellence, the

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pleasure is so appreciable as to stamp the work with value, even in the absence of any other considerable merit.

The peculiarities and the conditions of successful Imitation are most easily understood in connexion with the schools of Painting. In modern Art, the imitative school bulks largely, as regards both Nature and Humanity. In the Dutch masters, we find pictures that, but for their imitative skill, would be repellent instead of attractive. A haggard old man or woman, that would give us little interest in the actual, can be so expressively sketched by Rembrandt, that we are irresistibly charmed by the work. Hogarth and Wilkie have familiarized us with marvels of truthful delineation of subjects otherwise not remarkably interesting. So with Turner, Millais, and the pre-Raphaelites, and the numerous realists that have been influenced by their example, and by Ruskin's teaching.

The delight in witnessing a very successful Imitation is probably a complex effect, and is on that account all the more intense. There are at least three assignable circumstances, appealing to our sensibility in different ways. One is the ingenuity of reproducing upon an alien material the exact impression of some original: as in reducing a landscape or a human figure to canvas. Even when not done by an artist's hand, as in photography, a high degree of exactness in the imitation rouses us to a pleasing wonderment. Literary instances are not very easily distinguishable as imitation, having mostly some other elements of interest present; but there is a genuine stroke in Chaucer's presentation of ground newly cleared of a thick wood:

The ground agast was of the lighte,

That was nought wont to seen the sonne brighte.

The second circumstance is the discovery of minute points overlooked by us in our own observation of the original, for which also we bestow a tribute of our admiration on the artist's insight. A third assignable peculiarity, which is more within the sphere of literary art, is the representing of the minutest features, by some ingenious embodiment that is not mere copying, but a higher or transcendent reproduction, like the effect of well-chosen figures of speech. The passage just quoted from Chaucer illustrates this also.

All this artistic power may coexist with the production of Strength, Feeling or Humour, or it may flourish in the nearly total absence of one and all of these great effects. The two alternative ends can hardly be conjoined in anything approaching to perfection. Professor Veitch, in commenting on recent Scotch landscape painters, remarks :'We should at the same time have greater cause of gratitude if the artists in landscape would widen their range of vision, look less to mere sensuous grandeur and impressiveness, and be able to give us the power of the tender, the pathetic and the solitary spirit, to be found chiefly through love and holy passion and brooding reflection, in that district of Scotland which lies between the Pentlands and the Cheviotsthe weird wilds at the heads of the Tweed, the Yarrow, the Ettrick and the Teviot'. This exactly sets forth the choice as between the two aims of modern art. To carry Imitation to the point where it aids the emotional qualities, and no further, is to provide the greatest satisfaction to the beholder. For example, in order to Humour, Imitation must so far give way to distortion, which is the essence of caricature; while the likeness that still remains constitutes the effectiveness of the work.

As in Painting, so in Poetry, Imitation in its higher flights is modern. In all the three distinguishable peculiarities already indicated, we find the most successful examples in recent literature. For the critical appreciation of our greatest writers in poetry, and still more in prose fiction, we need a terminology adapted to signify excellence in the imitative function of art.

Imitation of particular individuals is the exceptional instance. It may be conducted from a serious purpose, as in adopting a distinguished man for a model, either in conduct or in style. Most frequent, however, is the employment of imitation in caricature or parody (p. 242). In such cases, the triple test may be applied-closeness of resemblance, original embodiments for creating surprise, and deviations with a view to the ludicrous.

Pope's Addison' is meant for vituperation; but the resemblance is obviously insufficient: had it been less so, the effect would have been greater. This is the constant danger of the caricaturist. The same applies to the eulogist of great virtues and capabilities; it is the perception of resemblance that disposes us to accept the eulogy

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The more usual form of Imitation is to depict character types. The writer and the reader are supposed to have each in view exemplary instances, although not the same individuals. Still, as regards well-marked types, a faithful delineation by the writer will be responded to in the experience of a certain number of readers; and will impart to them the pleasure that a good imitation gives, whether or not accompanied by the leading emotional qualities.

Chaucer's characters have often a remarkable basis of truth-like fidelity, along with their appeal to our other sensibilities. Thus, of the Schipman, it is said

'With many a tempest hadde his berd ben schake'. The Nun's French was 'after the scole of Stratford atte Bowe'.

Goldsmith's characters in the Vicar of Wakefield have always been admired for faithful personation of types, while in other ways rendered interesting. Our great novelists, or at least a large class of them, have usually aspired to this excellence.

Shakespeare, in his characters, produces occasionally, although not habitually, strokes of effect that belong to Imitation in its highest flights. The selecting of unobvious, but yet intensely characteristic touches, and the further effect of happy embodiment, can be found at their very best. His Macbeth does not come within our experience of known characters, and our sense of the general consistency is extremely vague. Nevertheless, we are at once affected by such expressive touches as his question, on hearing a prayer, 'But wherefore could I not pronounce Amen?' What strikes us is the suitability of the remark to the situation, considered as an imitative embodiment.

Mrs. Quickly could be referred to for the same felicitous touches of Shakespeare's character drawing. Where he had opportunities of actual observation, he could combine fidelity. with caricature or other emotional interest. Of the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet,' Johnson has said, 'The Nurse is one of the characters in which the author delighted; he has, with great subtlety of distinction, drawn her at once loquacious and secret, obsequious and insolent, trusty and dishonest'.

Thackeray has, by iteration, attained to the consummate personation of a flirt, and has combined exactness in the