485 Painting and Poetry. [Book X. 



Painting derives its chief power of pleafing from the 

 happy imitation of objects that have the power of re- 

 newing agreeable fenfations ; yet here much depends 

 on a judicious ufe and difpofition of the primary ele- 

 ments of beauty : lively colours, proper contrafts, the 

 waving line, are always attended to by excellent 

 painters. 



Poetry depends little on the primary ingredients of 

 beauty or pleafure, except in what refpects the meafure 

 of the verfe ; and one reafon for the pleafure of verfe 

 I apprehend to be, the agitation occafioned by renew- 

 ing ideas and fenfations, fuch being the return of 

 founds, and this efpecially when properly enlivened 

 with new ones. Perhaps in defcriptive poetry the 

 beauties of contraft may be proper to be attended to j 

 thus it fteals fome of the beauties of both mufic and 

 painting; but its chief power over the mind is derived 

 from the aflbciated or factitious fenfe of pleafure, and 

 from a reprefentation ofthofe objects which, by inter- 

 efting the pafilons, produce mental emotion. It is re- 

 marked, that imperfect characters are moft agreeable 

 in poetry ; the reafons I fufpect to be thefe . ifl, Bccaufe 

 we find in them a picture of ourfelves, and often a fort 

 of excufe for our own frailties, cidly, Becaufe there 

 is more of the fublime in occafional fallies of vice or 

 patiion, than in uniform goodnefs. jdly, Becaufe of 

 the contraft between the good and bad parts of the 

 character, the latter really fetting off and making more 

 confpicuous the former. I have already mentioned the 

 pleafure of figurative language, refulting from the va- 

 riety of thought and emotion introduced by the two 

 trains of ideas * j and it is remarkable that, " when figu- 

 rative 



* " The ugh the metaphor began in poverty (of language) it 



did 



