94 



son has the following remark, which I have 

 taken care to copy very exactly; "The 

 majority of thinking and learned men, 

 whom it has been my lot to converse with 

 on such subjects, are as well persuaded of 

 terrors being the cause of sublime, as that 

 Tenterden steeple is of Goodwin sands." 

 As Mr. Mason seems very conversant with 

 the classics, as well as with English authors, 

 and as the sublime in poetry has been dis- 

 cussed by writers of high authority, and 

 the sublimity of many passages very gene- 

 rally acknowledged, I could wish that he 

 and his learned friends, would take the 

 trouble of examining such passages in 

 Homer, Virgil, Shakspeare, Milton, and 

 all the poets who are most eminent for 

 their sublimity: and should they find, as 

 surely they will, that almost all of them 

 are founded upon terror, or on those mo- 

 difications of it which Mr. Burke has so 

 admirably pointed out, they may perhaps 

 be inclined to speak somewhat less con- 

 temptuously of his researches. They may 

 even be led to reflect, what must have been 



