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what is disagreeable to nature is called good and virtuous; a strange confusion of ideas and affections arises in the minds of many; and an appearance of no small contradiction between their notions and their actions. There are many who love virtue and who detest vice, and this not from hypocrisy or affectation, who notwithstanding very frequently act ill and wickedly in particulars without the least remorse; because these particular occasions never came into view when the passions on the side of virtue were so warmly affected by certain words heated originally by the breath of others; and for this reason, it is hard to repeat certain sets of words, though owned by themselves unoperative, without being in some degree affected; especially if a warm and affecting tone of voice accompanies them, as suppose,

Wise, valiant, generous, good, and great.

These words, by having no application, ought to be unoperative; but when words commonly sacred to great occasions are used, we are affected by them even without the occasions. When words which have been generally so applied are put together without any rational view, or in such a manner that they do not rightly agree with each other, the style is called bombast. And it requires in several cases much good sense and experience to be guarded against the force of such language; for when propriety is neglected, a greater number of these affecting words may be taken into the service and a greater variety may be indulged in combining them.

THE EFFECT OF WORDS.

If words have all their possible extent of power, three effects arise in the mind of the hearer. The first is, the sound; the second, the picture, or representation of the thing signified by the sound; the third is, the affection of the soul produced by one or by both of the foregoing. Compounded abstract words, of which we have been speaking (honour, justice, liberty, and the like), produce the first and the last of these effects, but not the second. Simple abstracts are used to signify some one simple idea, without much adverting to others which may chance to attend it, as blue, green, hot, cold, and the like; these are capable of affecting all three of the purposes of words; as the aggregate words, man, castle, horse, &c., are in a yet higher degree. But I am of opinion that the most general effect, even of these words, does not

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arise from their forming pictures of the several things they would represent in the imagination; because, on a very diligent examination of my own mind, and getting others to consider theirs, I do not find that once in twenty times any such picture is formed, and when it is, there is most commonly a particular effort of the imagination for that purpose. But the aggregate words operate, as I said of the compound-abstracts, not by presenting any image to the mind, but by having from use the same effect on being mentioned, that their original has when it is seen. Suppose we were to read a passage to this effect: "The river Danube rises in a moist and mountainous soil in the heart of Germany, where, winding to and fro, it waters several principalities, until, turning into Austria, and leaving the walls of Vienna, it passes into Hungary; there with a vast flood, augmented by the Saave and the Drave, it quits Christendom, and rolling through the it enters by many mouths in the Black Sea." barbarous countries which border on Tartary, In this description many things are mentioned, as mountains, rivers, cities, the sea, &c. let anybody examine himself, and see whether he has had impressed on his imagination any pictures of a river, mountain, watery soil, Germany, &c. Indeed it is impossible, in the rapidity and quick succession of words in conversation, to have ideas both of the sound of the word, and of the thing represented: besides, some words, expressing real essences, are so mixed with others of a general and nominal import, that it is impracticable to jump from sense to thought, from particulars to generals, from things to words, in such a manner as to answer the purposes of life; nor is it necessary that we should.

But

EXAMPLES THAT WORDS MAY AFFECT WITHOUT RAISING IMAGES.

I find it very hard to persuade several that their passions are affected by words from whence they have no ideas; and yet harder to convince them, that in the ordinary course of conversation we are sufficiently understood without raising any images of the things concerning which we speak. It seems to be an odd subject of dispute with any man, whether he has ideas in his mind or not. Of this, at first view, every man, in his own forum, ought to judge without appeal. But, strange as it may appear, we are often at a loss to know what ideas we have of things, or whether we have any ideas at all upon some subjects. even requires a good deal of attention to be

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man;

thoroughly satisfied on this head. Since I wrote these papers I found two very striking instances of the possibility there is that a man may hear words without having any idea of the things which they represent, and yet afterwards be capable of returning them to others, combined in a new way, and with great propriety, energy, and instruction. The first instance is that of Mr. Blacklock, a poet blind from his birth. Few men blessed with the most perfect sight can describe visual objects with more spirit and justness than this blind which cannot possibly be attributed to his having a clearer conception of the things he describes than is common to other persons. Mr. Spence, in an elegant preface which he has written to the works of this poet, reasons very ingeniously, and, I imagine, for the most part, very rightly, upon the cause of this extraordinary phenomenon; but I cannot altogether agree with him, that some improprieties in language and thought, which occur in these poems, have arisen from the blind poet's imperfect conception of visual objects, since such improprieties, and much greater, may be found in writers even of a higher class than Mr. Blacklock, and who notwithstanding possessed the faculty of seeing in its full perfection. Here is a poet doubtless as much affected by his own descriptions as any that reads them can be; and yet he is affected with this strong enthusiasm by things of which he neither has nor can possibly have any idea further than that of a bare sound: and why may not those who read his works be affected in the same manner that he was, with as little of any real ideas of the things described? The second instance is of Mr. Saunderson, professor of mathematics in the University of Cambridge. This learned man had acquired great knowledge in natural philosophy, in astronomy, and whatever sciences depend upon mathematical skill. What was the most extraordinary and the most to my purpose, he gave excellent lectures upon light and colours; and this man taught others the theory of these ideas which they had, and which he himself undoubtedly had not. But it is probable that the words red, blue, green, answered to him as well as the ideas of the colours themselves; for the ideas of greater or lesser degrees of refrangibility being applied to these words, and the blind man being instructed in what other respects they were found to agree or to disagree, it was as easy for him to reason upon the words, as if he had been fully master of the ideas. Indeed it must be owned he could make no new discoveries in the way of experi

ment. He did nothing but what we do every day in common discourse. When I wrote this last sentence, and used the words every day and common discourse, I had no images in my mind of any succession of time; nor of men in conference with each other; nor do I imagine that the reader will have any such ideas on reading it. Neither when I spoke of red, or blue, and green, as well as refrangibility, had I these several colours or the rays of light passing into a different medium, and there diverted from their course, painted before me in the way of images. I know very well that the mind possesses a faculty of raising such images at pleasure; but then an act of the will is necessary to this; and in ordinary conversation or reading it is very rarely that any image at all is excited in the mind. If I say, "I shall go to Italy next summer," I am well understood. Yet I believe nobody has by this painted in his imagination the exact figure of the speaker passing by land or by water, or both; sometimes on horseback, sometimes in a carriage; with all the particulars of the journey. Still less has he any idea of Italy, the country to which I propose to go; or of the greenness of the fields, the ripening of the fruits, and the warmth of the air, with the change to this from a different season, which are the ideas for which the word summer is substituted: but least of all has he any image from the word next; for this word stands for the idea of many summers, with the exclusion of all but one: and surely the man who says next summer, has no images of such a succession and such an exclusion. In short, it is not only of these ideas which are commonly called abstract, and of which no image at all can be formed, but even of particular, real beings, that we converse without having any idea of them excited in the imagination; as will certainly appear on a diligent examination of our minds. Indeed, so little does poetry depend for its effect on the power of raising sensible images, that I am convinced it would lose a very considerable part of its energy if this were the necessary result of all description. Because that union of affecting words, which is the most powerful of all poetical instruments, would frequently lose its force, along with its propriety and consistency, if the sensible images were always excited. There is not perhaps in the whole Eneid a more grand and laboured passage than the description of Vulcan's cavern in Etna, and the works that are there carried on.

Virgil dwells particularly on the formation of the thunder, which he describes unfinished under the hammers of the Cyclops.

But what are the principles of this extra- | Lucretius has drawn of religion, in order to ordinary composition?

Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ
Addiderant; rutili tres ignis, et alitis austri:
Fulgores nunc terrificos, sonitumque, metumque
Miscebant operi, flammisque sequacibus iras.

This seems to me admirably sublime; yet if we attend coolly to the kind of sensible images which a combination of ideas of this sort must form, the chimeras of madmen cannot appear more wild and absurd than such a picture. Three rays of twisted showers, three of watery clouds, three of fire, and three of the winged south wind; then mixed they in the work terrific lightnings, and sound, and fear, and anger, with pursuing flames." This strange composition is formed into a gross body; it is hammered by the Cyclops, it is in part polished, and partly continues rough. The truth is, if poetry gives us a noble assemblage of words corresponding to many noble ideas which are connected by circumstances of time or place, or related to each other as cause and effect, or associated in any natural way, they may be moulded together in any form, and perfectly answer their end. The picturesque connection is not demanded; because no real picture is formed; nor is the effect of the description at all the less upon this account. What is said of Helen by Priam and the old men of his council, is generally thought to give us the highest possible idea of that fatal beauty.

Οὐ νέμεσις, Τρῷας καὶ ἐϋκνήμιδας Αχαιούς,
Τοῇ δ' ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἄλγεα πάσχειν·
Αἰνῶς δ ̓ ἀθανάτῃσι θεῇς εἰς ὦπα ἔοικεν.

They cried, No wonder such celestial charms
For nine long years have set the world in arms;
What winning graces! what majestic mien !
She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen.

POPE.

Here is not one word said of the particulars of her beauty; nothing which can in the least help us to any precise idea of her person; but yet we are much more touched by this manner of mentioning her, than by those long and laboured descriptions of Helen, whether handed down by tradition, or formed by fancy, which are to be met with in some authors. I am sure it affects me much more than the minute description which Spenser has given of Belphebe; though I own that there are parts in that description, as there are in all the descriptions of that excellent writer, extremely fine and poetical. The terrible picture which

display the magnanimity of his philosophical hero in opposing her, is thought to be designed with great boldness and spirit.

Humana ante oculos fœdè cum vita jaceret,
In terris, oppressa gravi sub religione,
Quæ caput e cœli regionibus ostendebat
Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans;
Primus Graius homo mortales tollere contra
Est oculos ausus.-

What idea do you derive from so excellent a picture? none at all, most certainly: neither has the poet said a single word which might in the least serve to mark a single limb or feature of the phantom, which he intended to represent in all the horrors imagination can conceive. In reality, poetry and rhetoric do not succeed in exact description so well as painting does; their business is, to affect rather by sympathy than imitation; to display rather the effect of things on the mind of the speaker, or of others, than to present a clear idea of the things themselves. This is their most extensive province, and that in which they succeed the best.

THE FLIGHT OF VENUS WITH ASCANIUS.

Broad lights were in the Tyrian hall,
From golden urns the perfumes breathed;
Round silken couch and broidered pall
The Tyrian rose and lily wreathed;

And hidden music stole between
The love-sighs of the Tyrian queen.

And round the royal banquet lay
Troy's martial sons, with garlands crowned;
Survivors of the mighty fray,
When, with a midnight tiger's bound,

Sprang the fierce Greek on Ilion's lair,
But found the wakened lion there.

The toil was past, the havoc done,

The fires of ruin blazed no more;
No more on Ilion's portals shone
The banner wet with Grecian gore;
Nor warrior's trump nor charger's tread
Profaned the silence of the dead.

No more at morn, her glittering power
Rushed like a torrent to the field;
No more at eve, the royal bower
Welcomed the bearers of the shield:
Now moaned the melancholy wave
The only dirge above the brave.

But on that eve, Troy's warrior sons,
Storm-tost, and weary of the main,
Lay lapsing on their banquet-thrones-
Lay quaffing the celestial rain

That the pressed grape, on Afric's shores,
In drops of purple fragrance pours.

And there, beside th' impassioned Queen,
Their Chieftain tells his lofty tale;
Her bosom burning with the scene,
Her cheek with more than terror pale,
Her eye like lightning through the gloom,
Her thoughts of exile, woe, the tomb!

For in her arms an infant lies,

The loveliest eye e'er looked upon-
The little King of smiles and sighs,
Who makes of human hearts his throne:
Once fettered in his viewless chain,
Wit, wisdom, valour, all are vain!

There Cupid, by his mother laid

Where young Ascanius should have lain,
Plays with her tresses' perfumed braid,
Yet steeps her soul in subtle pain;
Seems to her lip in sport to cling,
Yet, aspic-like, there leaves the sting.

But where is gone the guileless child

That should in those white arms repose?
O'er forest deep and desert wild,
He's gone, to bowers of deathless rose;
By Venus borne on wings of wind,
Leaving her fatal son behind.

Now o'er the Grecian sunset-main
High wheels the pomp its bright career;
Till sparkles far Cythera's fane,-
Seen o'er the water's azure sphere,

Through evening cloud and ocean haze,
Rich as some new-born planet's blaze.

And now, upon the silver strand,

The train of beauty fold the wing;, And, myrtle-crowned, and harp in hand, Wreath round his couch the mystic ring; And fill with dreams of love and joy Thy slumbers, infant hope of Troy ! ARATUS.

COUNT FITZ-HUM.

FROM THE GERMAN OF SCHULZE.

The town-council were sitting, and in gloomy silence; alternately they looked at each other, and at the official order (that morning received) which reduced their perquisites and salaries by one-half. At length the chief burgomaster rose, turned the mace-bearer out of the room, and bolted the door. That worthy man, how

VOL. VI.

ever, was not so to be baffled: old experience in acoustics had taught him where to apply his ear with most advantage in cases of the present emergency; and as the debate soon rose from a humming of gentle dissent to the stormy pitch of downright quarrelling, he found no difficulty in assuaging the pangs of his curiosity. The council, he soon learned, were divided as to the course to be pursued on their common calamity; whether formally to remonstrate or not, at the risk of losing their places; indeed, they were divided on every point except one, and that was, contempt for the political talents of the new prince, who could begin his administration upon a principle so monstrous as that of retrenchment.

How

At length, in one of the momentary pauses of the hurricane, the council distinguished the sound of two vigorous fists playing with the utmost energy upon the panels of the door outside. "What presumption is this?" exclaimed the chairman, immediately leaping up. ever, on opening the door, it appeared that the fury of the summons was dictated by no failure in respect, but by absolute necessitynecessity has no law-and any more reverential knocking could have no chance of being audible. The person outside was Mr. Commissioner Pig; and his business was to communicate a despatch of pressing importance which he had that moment received by express.

"First of all, gentlemen," said the pursy commissioner, "allow me to take breath:" and, seating himself, he began to wipe his forehead. Agitated with the fear of some unhappy codicil to the unhappy testament already received, the members gazed anxiously at the open letter which he held in his hand; and the chairman, unable to control his impatience, made a grasp at it: "Permit me, Mr. Pig."-"No!" said Mr. Pig: "it is the postscript only which concerns the council: wait one moment, and I will have the honour of reading it myself." Thereupon he drew out his spectacles; and, adjusting them with provoking coolness, slowly and methodically proceeded to read as follows: "We open our letter to acquaint you with a piece of news which has just come to our knowledge, and which it will be important for your town to learn as soon as possible. His Serene Highness has resolved on visiting the remoter provinces of his new dominions immediately: he means to preserve the strictest incognito; and we understand will travel under the name of Count Fitz-Hum, and will be attended only by one gentleman of the bedchamber, viz. Mr. Von Hoax. The carriage he will use on this occasion is a plain landau,

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"Now, my dear creatures," said the commissioner to his wife and daughter, on returning home, "without a moment's delay send for the painter, the upholsterer, the cabinetmaker, also for the butcher, the fishmonger, the poulterer, the confectioner: in one half-hour let each and all be at work; and at work let them continue all day and all night.'

the body painted dark blue; and for his high-senate in rotation, as also to the commissioner! ness in particular, you will easily distinguish which done, the council adjourned. him by his superb whiskers. Of course we need scarcely suggest to you, that if the principal hotel of your town should not be in comme-il-faut order, it will be proper to meet the illustrious traveller on his entrance with an offer of better accommodations in one of the best private mansions, amongst which your own is reputed to stand foremost. Your town is to have the honour of his first visit; and on this account you will be much envied, and the eyes of all the country turned upon you."

"Doubtless, most important intelligence!" said the chairman, "but who is your correspondent?"-"The old and eminent house of Wassermuller and Co.; and I thought it my duty to communicate the information without delay." "To be sure, to be sure: and the council is under the greatest obligation to you for the service."

So said all the rest: for they all viewed in the light of a providential interference on behalf of the old system of fees, perquisites, and salaries, this opportunity so unexpectedly thrown in their way of winning the prince's favour. To make the best use of this opportunity, however, it was absolutely necessary that their hospitalities should be on the most liberal scale. On that account it was highly gratifying to the council that Commissioner Pig loyally volunteered the loan of his house. Some drawback undoubtedly it was on this pleasure, that Commissioner Pig, in his next sentence, made known that he must be paid for his loyalty. However, there was no remedy; and his demands were acceded to. For not only was Pighouse the only mansion in the town at all suitable for the occasion, but it was also known to be so, in the prince's capital, as clearly appeared from the letter which had just been read-at least when read by Pig himself.

All being thus arranged, and the council on the point of breaking up, a sudden cry of "Treason!" was raised by a member; and the mace-bearer was detected skulking behind an arm-chair, perfidiously drinking in the secrets of the state. He was instantly dragged out, the enormity of his crime displayed to him (which under many wise governments, the chairman assured him, would have been punished with the bowstring or instant decapitation), and after being amerced in a considerable fine, which paid the first instalment of the Piggian demand, he was bound over to inviolable secrecy by an oath of great solemnity. This oath, on the suggestion of a member, was afterwards administered to the whole of the

"At work! but what for? what for, Pig?" "And, do you hear, as quickly as possible," added Pig driving them out of the room. "But what for?" they both repeated, reentering at another door.

Without vouchsafing any answer, however, the commissioner went on:-"and let the tailor, the shoemaker, the milliner, the—”

"The fiddlestick end, Mr. Pig. I insist upon knowing what all this is about." "No matter what, my darling. Sic volo, sic jubeo: stat pro ratione voluntas."

"Hark you, Mr. Commissioner. Matters are at length come to a crisis. You have the audacity to pretend to keep a secret from your lawful wife. Hear, then, my fixed determination. At this moment there is a haunch of venison roasting for dinner. The cook is so ignorant that, without my directions, the haunch will be scorched to a cinder. Now I swear that, unless you instantly reveal to me the secret without any reservation whatever, I will resign the venison to its fate. I will, by all that is sacred!"

The venison could not be exposed to a more fiery trial than was Mr. Commissioner Pig; the venison, when alive and hunted, could not have perspired more profusely, nor trembled in more anguish. But there was no alternative. His "morals" gave way before "his passions;" and after binding his wife and daughter by the general oath of secrecy, he communicated the state mystery. By the same or similar methods so many other wives assailed the virtue of their husbands, that in a few hours the limited scheme of secrecy adopted by the council was realized on the most extensive scale: for before nightfall, not merely a few members of the council, but every man, woman, and child in the place, had been solemnly bound over to inviolable secrecy.

Meantime some members of the council, who had an unhappy leaning to infidelity, began to suggest doubts on the authenticity of the commissioner's news. Of old time he had been celebrated for the prodigious quantity of secret intelligence which his letters communicated, but not equally for its quality. Too often it stood in unhappy contradiction to the

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