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Doctor Blair has obferved that Longinus has frequently ufed 

 the word fubhme to fignify any remarkable and diftinguifhing 

 excellence of compofition. In his celebrated treatife, accordingly, 

 we find that he has quoted paifages of great beauty and fome of 

 true fublimity, but it gives us no afliftance in the difcovery of 

 difcriminating principles. This inaccuracy appears to have arifen, 

 as I have already mentioned, from the motive which induced the 

 author to compofe it. He tells his friend Pofthumius that the 

 treatife of a preceding writer was deficient with regard to that 

 which appeared to him the more important part of a treatife on 

 the fubjefl of any art, the method by which llcill in that art 

 might be acquired. This deficiency he undertakes to fupply, and 

 propofing to give pradical precepts of compofition, he enters into 

 the feelings of a writer. In this view he fees the mind animated 

 by the confcioufnefs of vivid conceptions, and not confidering 

 that conceptions of very different kinds might give the mind oc- 

 cafion to triumph in the confcioufnefs of its own powers, he 

 defines the fublime by its analogy to that flattering fenfation. 

 But though we cannot learn from Longinus the nature of the 

 fublime, as diftinguifiied from other fpecies of compofition, it 

 would not be difficult to illuftrate it by examples from his wri- 

 tings. 



The author of the philofophical enquiry has not been thus 

 deficient in precifion. According to him terror is the ruling 

 principle of the fublime. That terror is in many cafes a confti- 

 tuent principle I am not difpofed to deny ; but I conceive that 

 there is not any clafs of fublime objeds which may not fuggeft 

 the emotion of grandeur independently of terror, and that there 



is 



