beginnings and insignificant agencies; as when the son of a poor miner revolutionized the world. This is a motive to exaggeration or hyperbole, the charm of Romance and of fairyland.

83. The display of Anger or Indignation, if approved of by us, is sublime.

These passions are modes of power or energy, and, unless they stir us up to disapprobation and hostility, they give us the agreeable elation of power. In poetry, bursts of indignation are highly effective. The angry passions and exalted energies of combatants rouse the feeling of energy in the spectator.

In Gray's Welsh Bard we have an expression of indignation raised to the sublime.

84. An effect of Terror sometimes mixes with the Sublime, but it detracts from, instead of heightening, the pleasurable sentiment.

Terror is, in its nature, a cause of weakness and prostration. So far as an object of might excites dread, it gives pain and not pleasure. One of the tokens of power is wide-spread destruction and ruin; and, if we are ourselves exempted from the misery, we may enjoy the spectacle as a manifestation of energy. If, however, there is danger to any of our own interests, we are overwhelmed by fear, in place of being elated by sublimity.

The vast power exercised by the Mongol conquerors would be sublime, if their destructive fury did not excite horror and indignation.

Mere poetic and undefined terrors have little depressing effect, and the power that they suggest gives rise to the unmingled sublime. There is no real terror inspired by the speech in Hamlet :-" "Tis now the very witching time of night."

So, in Cowper, the lines

"While God performs, upon the trembling stage
Of his own works, his dreadful part alone,"

are sublime from the well-chosen circumstances for suggesting power," the trembling stage," the acting "alone," and the "dreadful" part; while the dread is too vague to bring home the sense of danger either to ourselves or to any definite persons or interests.

In Milton's "Sin and Death" the sublime reposes upon mere imagined terror.

85. III. A third form of the feeling is that arising when we view or contemplate the powers of Nature. Thus, in watching the ocean wave, the commotion of the tempest, the flow of rivers and the fall of cataracts, the mountains as they tower aloft, the volcano, and the Alpine glacier, we are elevated and pleased by the feeling of superior might.

Here also is a kind of sympathy. We look at such displays as if a being like ourselves, but vastly more powerful, were at work. The personifying impulse of the mind led, in former times, to a belief in actual spirits, of the human type, investing the sea, the river, and the hurricane. The belief has passed away, but the fiction is kept up, on account of the grateful elation attending it.

The mere magnitude and expanse of the outer world—the outspread landscape as seen from a commanding height, and the plenitude of space with the scattered orbs of heaven-fill the mind with a sense of vastness, which is a variety of the feeling of might.

Even the results of man's industry may be on such a scale as to impress us with the sentiment of superior power; as in the case of populous cities, vast buildings, extensive machinery, mighty fleets, the implements of modern warfare.

86. The mental elation, arising on the view of personages and objects of superior power, may be imparted through the mere description of them.

A writer may so describe a conquering army, an heroic struggle, a grand prospect, a terrific storm, as to produce an

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memory in connection with that which excited it. It is by this memory or association of pleasure, that we counterwork the dulling effects of repetition, and the inferior susceptibility of advanced life. Affection is the memory of pleasure.

Fifthly, in artistic effects, it must not be forgotten how much depends on the temperament of the individual. When the mind is in a high degree disposed to some one emotion, the repetition of the same objects and the same forms of language neither palls nor loses effect. As regards the love of nature, for example, Wordsworth's feelings were so copious that he could exclaim,

"To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

The same effect could not be wrought in men generally, except by some of the rarest and greatest of scenic combinations. Johnson's patriotism could burn on the plains of Marathon, and his piety wax warmer amid the ruins of Iona; and such would be the experience of the average man. Wordsworth's heart could fill on much smaller occasions.

88. II. Harmony and Keeping, or the mutual support of the language and the subject.

We have already remarked on the power of an apposite comparison (FIGURES OF SIMILARITY, § 13). The mutual support of two effects diminishes the intellectual labor of conceiving, and thus heightens the pleasure. It is part of every fine art, as will be afterwards seen, to accumulate harmonies. In aiming at composition of a lofty kind, the difficulty is not so much to find strong language as to adapt and harmonize it.

An examination of Milton's description of Sin and Death would disclose an harmonious adjustment of the similes, the circumstances, and the flow of the language, to the subject and to one another. We have in this passage all the elements of the sublime. The vast power of the objects described, the expression borrowed from other powerful objects, the originality, the keeping of the particulars, and the rich cadence of the language,-all contribute to the impression.

Strong epithets are forcible, only when bestowed on suitable objects. The vague comparisons and ill-assorted circumstances so frequent in Ossian, are a source of feebleness.

The mixture of Saxon and Classical elements in English has often a discordant effect, and is adverse to poetry.

89. III. Variety, or the due alternation of effects.

What has been for some time out of mind has a certain freshness on being renewed. We may derive considerable pleasure from varying or alternating effects already experienced. After an interval, we can revisit impressive scenes, and re-peruse great compositions, with delight.

On this ground, writing may be powerful by the variety of its effects, although none are absolutely new. Commonplace is not at its lowest, till it is narrow-ranging, poor, monotonous. A full command of the ideas, images, and combinations of original minds, will make a second-rate poet, a good play-wright, a successful novelist, or an eloquent orator.

90. Variety is sought after in all parts of composition.

The frequent occurrence of the same sound is unpleasant. Hence it is a law of melody to alternate the letters of the alphabet. (See MELODY.)

91. We avoid repeating words by the use of pronouns. The same end is sought by employing general words and synonymes. The following is an example :

"The voyage is recommenced. They sail by the sandy shore of Araya, see the lofty cocoa-nut trees that stand over Cumana, pursue their way along that beautiful coast, noticing the Piritu palm at Maracapana, then traverse the difficult waters of the gloomy Golfo Triste, pass the province of Venezuela, catch a glimpse of the white summits of the mountains above Santa Martha, continue on their course to Darien, now memorable for the failure of so many great enterprises-and still no temple, no great idol, no visible creed, no cultus.”

A studied variation of terms is often carried too far; and there is seen in some eminent writers a readiness to incur repetition to a degree that would once have been reckoned inele

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gant. In this sentence from Macaulay, we find both variety and repetition :—" As there is no stronger sign of a mind destitute of the poetical faculty than the tendency to turn images into abstractions-Minerva, for example, into Wisdom-so there is no stronger sign of a mind truly poetical than a disposition to reverse the process, and to make individuals out of generalities."

In introducing synonymes to vary the language, there should, if possible, be some other reason apparent in the selection. "If any one take or touch a particlę of the hoard, the others join against him and hang him for the theft." Here, take or touch describes the mere physical action; theft is used in connection with its punishment as criminal. “Views with respect to human improvement are so comforting to entertain, that even, although founded in delusion, a wise man would be disposed to cherish them;" entertain and cherish are synonymes, but each has a certain propriety in its own connection.

92. Variety is also sought in the length and in the structure of sentences.

Some writers affect a succession of curt sentences, as Channing and Macaulay. In Johnson, we have the excessive iteration of the balanced period, which is a beauty when sparingly used. In Gibbon, the Johnsonian form is adopted, without being carried to the same excess. A good style introduces by turns every type of effective sentence that fits the subject.

93. In a long composition, as a Romance, a Play, or an Oration, many different kinds of interest or effect are purposely aimed at.

94. The extreme case of variety is Contrast; as in light and shade, cold and hot.

In style, variety amounting to contrast is seen in passing from the Scientific or abstract, to the Poetic or concrete; from the Tragic to the Comic; from Sublimity to Pathos. In such transitions, not merely is one state of feeling remitted, but an opposite is induced.