7 8 ESSAY upon the PRINCIPLES 



view his mind then in refpecl to Feeling, to Imagination, and 

 to Judgment ; and confider them as the leading powers to which 

 fubordinate ones are to be referred. The due union and the 

 due extent of thefe conflitutes that mental temperament, which, 

 by making beauty the vehicle of inftruclion, muft, at once, 

 pleafe the tafle and inform the underftanding. 



IT may be thought, perhaps, that, as the three powers men- 

 tioned cannot be fuppofed requifite in the hiftorian alone, fa 

 no analyfis referring to them can be held truly defcriptive 

 of his character. All the fine arts, however, are clofely allied. 

 " Habent quoddam commune vinculum (fays CICERO), et quafi 

 ' cognatione quadam inter fe continentur." Though the con- 

 ftituents of eminence be the fame in the whole, yet thefe are 

 highly diverfified by the applications and the balance required 

 in each. A flight difference in the leading powers of mind 

 forms all the variety which genius in the different arts exhibits. 

 If thofe principles then that are, at any time, adopted to form a 

 ftandard for juft execution in any one of them be not, in fome 

 degree, general, it may be held as certain that they are not 

 found. 



BY feeling is to be underftood that nice fenfibility which 

 catches even the flighteft impreffion, and in which there fubfifts 

 a due proportion between the emotion and the caufe of its ex- 

 citement. Thofe characters of feeling that are adverfe to juft 

 execution in the works of tafle arife both from its deficiency 

 and its excefs. In the one cafe, nature has done too little, in 

 the other fhe has done too much. That calloufnefs which pro- 

 ceeds from the want of feeling excludes impreffions of which 

 others are confcious, and thofe falfe irritations which proceed 

 from its excefs fuggeft emotions which, by the fober, are deem- 

 ed unnatural, becaufe they were never felt by them. It is in 

 that juft medium, which is equally removed from the extremes 

 mentioned, that feeling becomes the inftrument of genius. The 

 mafterly execution of an able writer pleafes and even improves 



that 



