CANTO rv. OF GOOD AND EVIL. US 



I 



" With fond delight we feel the potent charm, 

 When Zephyrs cool us, or when sun-beams warm; 

 With fond delight inhale the fragrant flowers, 

 Taste the sweet fruits, which bend the blushing bowers, 

 Admire the music of the vernal grove, 

 Or drink the raptures of delirious love. 



" So with long gaze admiring eyes behold 

 The varied landscape all its lights unfold; 160 



Huge rocks opposing o'er the stream project 

 Their naked bosoms, and the beams reflect; 



The varied landscape, 1. 160. The pleasure, we feel on examining 

 a fine landscape, is derived from various sources; as first the excite- 

 ment of the retina of the eye into certain quantities of action ; which 

 when there is in the optic nerve any accumulation of sensorial power, 

 is always agreeable. 2. When it is excited into such successive ac- 

 tions, as relieve each other; as when a limb has been long exerted in 

 one direction, by stretching it in another; as described in Zoonomia, 

 Sect. XL. 6. on ocular spectra. 3. And lastly by the associations of 

 its parts with some agreeable sentiments or tastes, as of sublimity, 

 beauty, utility, novelty; and the objects suggesting other senti- 

 ments, which have lately been termed picturesque as mentioned in 

 the note to Canto III, 1. 230 of this work. The two former of these 

 sources of pleasure arise from irritation, the last from association. 



