787 
The Father of the Gods his glory (Itroiids, 
Involv’d in tempefts, and a night of clouds: 
And from the middle darknefs flalhing out, 
By fits he deals his fiery bolts about. 
Earth feels the motions of lier angry god. 
Her entrails tremble, and her mountains nod. 
And flying beafts in forefts feek abode. 
Deep horror feizes every human bread ; 
Their pride is humbled, and their fears confefi:; 
While he, from high, his rolling thunder throws, - 
And fires the mountains with repeated blows; 
The rocks are from their old foundations rent; 
The^winds redouble, and the rains augment. Dryden, 
Every circumllance in this noble defcription is the pro¬ 
duction of an imagination heated and aftonilhed with 
the grandeur of the objeft. If there be any defedt, 
it is in the words immediately following thofe quoted; 
“ Ingerainant Auftri, et denfiflimus imber 5” where the 
tranlition appears to be made too haftily from the pre^ 
ceding fublime images, to a thick Ihower, and the blow¬ 
ing of the fouth wind; which fltews how difficult it is 
to defcend with grace, witliout feeming to fall. 
Tlie high importance of a proper choice of circum- 
fiances, when a defcription is meant to be fublime, feems 
not to have been fufficiently attended to. It has, how¬ 
ever, fucli a foundation in nature, as render^ the leafl 
deflexion from it fatal. When a writer is aiming at the 
beautiful only, his defcriptions may have improprieties 
in them, and yet be beautiful ftill. Some trivial or mif- 
judged circumftances can be overlooked by the reader; 
they make only the diff'erence of more or lefs; the gay, 
or pleafing, emotion, which he has raifed, fubfifis ftill. 
But the cafe is quite different with the fublime. There, 
one trifling circumllance, one mean idea, is fufficient to 
deftroy the whole charm. I'his is owing to the nature 
of the emotion aimed at by fublime compofition, which 
admits of no mediocrity, and cannot fubfill in a middle 
Hate; but mull either highly tranfport us, or, if un- 
I'uccefsful in the execution, leave us greatly difgufted, 
and dilpleafed. We attempt to rife along with the 
writer; the imagination is awakened, and put upon the 
ftretch ; but it requires to be fupported ; and if, iq the 
midft of its efforts, you defert it unexpedledly, down it 
comes, with a painful Ihock. When Milton, in his bat¬ 
tle of the angels, defcribes them as tearing up the moun¬ 
tains, and throwing them at one another ; there are, in 
his defcription, as Mr. Addifon has obferved, no cir- 
curaftances but what are properly fublime : 
From their foundations loos’ning to and fro, 
They pluck’d the feated hills, witJi all their load, 
Eocks, waters, woods; and by the lhaggy tops 
Uplifting, bore them in their hands.- 
Whereas Claudian, in a fegment upon the wars of the 
giants, has contrived to render this idea of their throw¬ 
ing the mountains, in itfelf fo grand, quite burlefque 
and ridiculous ; by this lingle circumllance, of one of 
his giants with the mountain Ida upon his Ihoulders, 
and a river, which flowed from the mountain, ninning 
down along the giant’s back, as he held it up in that 
pofture. There is a defcription too in Virgil, which is 
cenlurable, though more llightly, in this refpedl. It is 
that of the burning mountain ^tna ; a fubjeCl certainly 
very proper to be worked up by a poet into a fublime 
defcription: 
-Horrificis juxta tonat JEtna. minis. 
Interdumque atram prorumpit ad aethera nubera. 
Turbine fumantem piceo, & candente favilla; 
Attollitque globos ttammarum, & fidcra lambit. 
Interdum fcopulos, avullaque vifcera montis 
Erigit eruflans, liquefadlaque faxc fub auras 
Cum genitu glomerat, fundoque exaeftuat imo. 
/En, III. 
The port capacious, and fecure from wind, 
Is to the foot of thundering .®tna join’d. 
By turns a pitchy cloud llie rolls on high, 1 
By turns hot embers from her entrails fly, 
And flakes of mounting flames that lick (lie fky. J 
Oft from her bowels maffy rocks are thrown, 
And Ihiver’d by the force, come piece-meal down. 
Oft liquid lakes of burning fiilphur flow. 
Fed from the fiery fprings that boil below. Drydm. 
In the tranflation of Dryden, the debafing circumllance 
objefted to in the original, is, with propriety, omitted. 
This debafement lies here: that after leveral magnifi¬ 
cent images, the poet concludes with peifonifying the 
mountain, under this figure, “eruCtans vifcera cum ge- 
mitu,” belching up its bow'els with a groan ; which, by 
likening the mountain to a Tick or dnmken perl'on, de¬ 
grades the majefty of the defcription. It is to no pur- 
pofe to tell us, that the poet here aliudes to the fable 
of the giant Enceladus lying under mount fEtna; and 
that he fuppofes his motions and toliings to iiave occa- 
fioned the fiery eruftations. He intended the defcrip¬ 
tion of a fublime obje£l; and the natural ideas, railed 
by a burning mountain, are infinitely more lofty than 
the belchings of a giant, how huge foever. 
From the account here given of the nature of the 
grand or fublime, it clearly follows, that it is an emo¬ 
tion which can never be long protradled. The mind, 
by no force of genius, can be kept, for any conliderable 
time, fo far railed above its ul'ual balance, but will, of 
courfe, relax into its ordinary lituation. Neither are 
the abilities of any human writer fufficient to furnilh a 
long continuation of uninterrupted fublime ideas. The 
utmoft we can expect is, that this fire of imagination 
Ihould fometimes flalli upon us like lightning, and then 
difappear. In Homer and Milton, this effulgence of 
genius breaks forth more frequently, and witli greater 
lullre, than in moft other authors. Shakefpearc alio riles 
often into the true fublime. But no author v.'hatever is 
fublime throughout. Some, indeed, there are, who, by 
a ftrength and dignity in their conceptions, and a current 
of lofty ideas, preferve the reader’s mind always in a 
tone nearly allied to the fublime ; for which realbn tlicy 
may, in a limited fenfe, merit tlie name of fublime wri¬ 
ters ; and in which clafs we may jullly place Denioll- 
henes and Plato. 
Some writers are apt to imagine, that magnificent 
words, accumulated epithets, and a certain I'welling tone 
of expreflion, by riling above wliat is ulual or vulgar, 
contributes to, or even forms, the fublime. Nothing- 
can be more erroneous. In all the inftances of fublime 
writing here given, nothing of this kind appears. In 
general, in all good writing, the fublime lies in tltc 
thought, not in tlie words; and when the tliought is 
truly noble, it wdll, for the moft part, clothe itlelf in 
dignity of language. The fublime, indeed, rejects 
mean, low, or trivial, exprelTioiis ; but it is equally an 
enemy to Tuch as are turgid. The main fecret of being 
fublime, is to fay great things in few and plain wor-ds. 
It will be found to hold, without exceptioji, that the 
moft fublime authors are the iimpleft in their Ityle; and 
wlierever we find a writer, wlio affects a more than or¬ 
dinary pomp and parade of words, and is always endea¬ 
vouring to magnify his fubjecl; by epith.ets, there ive 
may ful’pecl, that, feeble in I'entiment, he is lludying to 
fupport Jiimlelf by mere expreflion. 
The fame unfavourable judgment we mull pafs on all 
that laboured apparatus with which I'ome w riters intro¬ 
duce a palfage, or defcription, wliich th.ey intend ftiall . 
be fublime ; calling on their readers to attend, invoking 
their mufe, or breaking forth into genei al,j umneaning, 
exclamations, concerning the greatnei's, terriblenefs, or 
majefty, of the object -wdiich they are to deferibe. Mr. 
Addilon, in his “ Campaign,” has fallen into an error of 
this kind, when about to deferibe the battle of Blenheim: 
But ■ 
GRANDEUR. 
/ 
