is only a mere name, indicative of our feeling of the resemblance of certain affections of our mind, excited by objects, material or mental, that agree, perhaps, in no other circumstance, but in that analogous undefinable emotion which they excite. Whatever is vast, in the material world-whatever is supremely comprehensive in intellect--whatever in morals implies virtuous affections or passions far beyond the ordinary level of humanity, or even guilt, that is ennobled, in some measure, by the fearlessness of its daring, or the magnitude of the ends, to which it has had the boldness to aspire -these and various other objects, in mind and matter, produce certain vivid feelings, which are so similar as to be classed together; and, if we speak of sublimity, merely in reference to the various objects which excite these analogous feelings, so as to make the enumeration of the objects a sort of definition of the species of emotion itself, there can be no risk of mistake, more than in saying, that sweetness is a word expressive of those sensations which sugar, honey, and various other substitutes that might be named, excite. But, if we attempt to define sweetness itself as a sensation, or sublimity itself as an emotion, we either state what is absolutely nugatory, or what is still more probably false in its general extent, however partially true; because our attention, in our definition, will be given to some particular emotions of the class, not to any thing common to the class, since there is truly no common circumstance, which words can adequately express. Hence it happens, that by this singling out of particular objects, we have many theories of sublimity, as we have of beauty; all of them founded on the supposition of an universal sublimity a parte rei, as the theories of beauty were founded on an universal beauty a parte rei. Sublimity, says one writer, is the terrible-according to another writer, it is magnitude or amplitude, which is essential to the emotion-according to another, it is mighty force of power-according to another, it is the mere suggestion of images of feelings, directly connected with that elevation in place which has given sublimity its name according to another, it arises from a wider range of associations, all, however, centering in some prior affections of the mind, as their direct source. It is very true, that terror, vastness of size, extraordinary force, high elevation, and various associate images, do produce feelings of sublimity; but it is not equally true, that any one of these feelings is itself all the other feelings. Great elevation, for example, may excite in me the emction to which it has given the distinctive name, and it is even possible, that many great virtues, may, by a sort of poetic analogy, suggest the notion of local elevation, as snow suggests the notion of spotless innocence, or the shadow that follows any brilliant object, the notion of envy pursuing merit. But even though, in thinking of heroic virtue, the analogy of local elevation were excited,-which it surely is only in very rare cases, this would be no reason for believing, that the heroic virtue itself is incapable of exciting emotion, till it have previously suggested height, and the feelings associated with height. It is the same with magnitude or power; they are causes of sublime feelings, not causes of the sublime, which has no real existence,-nor of those other sublime feelings, which have no direct relation to magnitude or power. Power itself, for example, is not magnitude; nor magnitude power. The contemplation of eternity or infinity of space, is instantly, and of itself, as a mere object of thought, productive of this emotion, without any regard to my power of conceiving infinity, which may, indeed, be a subsequent cause of astonishment, but which certainly does not precede the emotion as its cause.

In

like manner, any great energy of mind, either in acting or bearing, though it may suggest, by analogy, magnitude, as it may suggest many other analogies, does not depend, for the emotion which it excites, on the previous suggestion of the analogous amplitude of size. The two primary errors, as I have already said, in all these various theories, which may be considered as confutations of each other, consist in supposing, first, that sublimity is one,—the sublime, to use the language of theory,-which, therefore, as suggested by one object, may be precisely the same with the emotion suggested by other objects; and, secondly, the belief, that because certain objects have an analogy, so as to be capable, by the mere laws of association, of suggesting each other, they, therefore, do uniformly suggest each other, and excite emotion only in this way,-that because any generous sacrifice, for instance, may suggest the notion of magnitude or elevation in place-which, if it suggest them at all, it suggests only rarely,―it, therefore, must at all times suggest them, as if it were absolutely impossible for us to see an object, without thinking of any analogous object,-to look on snow, without thinking of innocence, or on a shadow, without thinking of envy.

I trust, after the remarks already made, that it is unnecessary for me to repeat any arguments in confutation of the error, as to one universal sublime, an error of precisely the same kind, as that which would contend, that, because the fragrance of a violet, and the simplicity of a comprehensive theorem, are both pleasing, the theorem comprehends the fragrance, or the fragrance the mathematical demonstration. As there are many pleasures, excited by many objects, but not the pleasing,--many emotions of beauty, excited by many objects, but not the beautiful;-so are there many emotions of sublimity, excited by many objects, but not the sublime. The emotion which I feel, when I think of all the ages of eternity, that, however indefinitely multiplied, are as nothing to the ages that still remain,--that which I feel when I think of a night of tempest on the ocean, when no light is to be seen, but the flash of guns of distress from some half-wrecked vessel; or the still more dreadful light from the clouds above, that gleams only to show the billows bursting over their prey, and nothing to be heard but the shriek that rises loudest, at the very moment, when it is lost at last and for ever, in one continued howl and dashing of the storm and the surge,these feelings, though both classed as sublime, and having some resemblance, which leads to this classification, are yet, in their most important respects, very different from each other; and how different are they both, from the emotion, with which I regard some moral sublimity,-the memorable action of Arria, when she presented the dagger to her lord, or the more tranquil happiness of the elder Poetus, when, on being ordered by the tyrant to death, as in the accustomed rites of some grateful sacrifice, he sprinkled his blood as a libation to Jove the deliverer! It is in the moral conduct of our fellow men, that the species of sublimity is to be found, which we most gladly recognise, as the character of that glorious nature, which we have received from God,--a character which makes us more erect in mind, than we are in stature, and enables us, not to gaze on the heavens merely, but to lift to them our very wishes, and to imitate in some faint degree, and to admire at least, where we cannot imitate, the gracious perfection that dwells there. It is to mind, therefore, that we turn, even from the sublimest wonders of magnificence, which the material universe exhibits.

"Look then abroad through Nature, to the range
Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres,
Wheeling unshaken through the void immense;
And speak, O man, does this capacious scene,
With half that kindling majesty, dilate
Thy strong conception, as when Brutus rose
Refulgent from the stroke of Cæsar's fate,
Amid the crowd of patriots!—and his arm
Aloft extending, like eternal Jove,

When Guilt brings down the thunder, call'd aloud
On Tully's name, and shook his crimson steel,
And bade the father of his country, hail!

For, lo! the tyrant prostrate in the dust,
And Rome again is free."*

Yet, though mind exhibits the sublimities, on which we love most to dwell, we must not, on that account, suppose, that material objects are incapable of exciting any kindred feeling;-that, but for the accident of some mental association, the immensity of space would be considered by us with the same indifference as a single atom;-or the whole tempest of surges in the seemingly boundless world of waters, with as little emotion, as the shallow pool that may chance to be dimpling before our eyes.

The remarks which I made on beauty, might, however, of themselves, have been sufficient to save you from this mistake; and, indeed, after those remarks, it was, perhaps, superfluous in me to repeat, in the case of sublimity, any part of the argument, which I employed on the former occasion. The further applications of it, which I have not made, you can have no difficulty in making for yourselves.

LECTURE LVIII.

I. IMMEDIATE EMOTIONS, NOT NECESSARILY INVOLVING ANY MORAL FEELING.-RETROSPECT OF THE DISCUSSION OF THE EMOTIONS OF BEAUTY AND SUBLIMITY.-4. LUDICROUSNESS, THE OPPOSITE OF SUBLIMITY.-SOURCES OF THE LUDICROUS.-HOBBES' THEORY ERRONEOUS. -LUDICROUSNESS ARISES FROM UNEXPECTED CONGRUITIES OR INCONGRUITIES IN LANGUAGE-IN THOUGHT-OR IN OBJECTS OF PERCEP. TION.-EXCEPTIONS.

GENTLEMEN, after the remarks which I had made on the varieties of the emotion of beauty, it was not necessary for me to dwell at so much length on the kindred emotions of sublimity, to the elucidation of which, I proceeded in my last Lecture;-the principal inquiries which had engaged us, with respect to the nature of beauty, being only another form of inquiries, which we might have pursued, indeed, in like manner, in the case of sublimity, but which it would have been tedious and profitless to repeat.

Opposed as the sublime and beautiful usually are, by a sort of antithetic arrangement, in our works of rhetoric, or of the philosophy of taste, they are far from being essentially distinct, but at least in the great number of instances, shadow into each other; the sublime, in these cases, being only one portion * Pleasures of Imagination, B. I. v. 487-500.

of a series of feelings, of which the beautiful, as it has been termed, is also a part. The emotions of sublimity may, indeed, be excited by objects, which no diminution of the attendant circumstances, or of intensity of quality, could render beautiful, but which, on the contrary, when thus diminished, are disgusting or ridiculous, rather than agreeable. Yet, though there are, unquestionably, cases of this sort; as when guilt becomes sublime by the very atrocity with which it dares, and executes what other bosoms might shudder even to conceive,- —or the mean wretchedness of some sterile waste acquires a kind of dignity from the extent of that very desolation, which, in a less degree, made it meanly wretched, the greater number of cases are, as unquestionably, of a different sort;-in which, by gradual increase, or diminution of qualities, or alteration of the attendant circumstances, the emotion is progressively varied, till, by change after change, what was merely beautiful, becomes grand, and ultimately sublime,-the extremes seeming, perhaps, to have no resemblance, but this very difference of the extremes resulting only from the number of successive feelings in the long scale of emotion, in each sequence of which, compared with the feelings immediately preceding, there may have been shadowing of the closest resemblance. How very natural a process this is, I showed you, by examples of progressive beauty, grandeur, and sublimity, on different aspects, both of matter, and of mind.

Since beauty, then, by a gradual change of circumstances, can thus rise into sublimity, it is not wonderful that phenomena, which are parts of a series, should be, in many important respects, analogous; so that properties or relations, which are found to belong to one portion of the series, should be found to belong also to the other, that, for example, as we diffuse, unconsciously, our delightful feeling of beauty, in the object which excites it, we should diffuse in like manner, our feelings of sublimity in the objects, which we term sublime, and imagine some awful majesty to hang around them, even when there is no eye to behold them, and consequently no heart to be impressed with their overwhelming presence. The tendency which this continued incorporation of our feeling in those sublime objects on which we gaze, or of which we think, produces, to the belief of a permanent sublimity in objects, may, very naturally, be supposed to flow into the illusion, which imagines the existence of something, that, independently of our feelings, is common to all the objects which thus powerfully impress us, and which may, of itself, be termed the sublime; as something common to all beautiful objects, independently of our feeling of their beauty, was, in like manner, imagined, and termed the beautiful. It was necessary for me, therefore, to expose the fallacy of these last lingering universal essences of the schools, and to show, that, as we have not one emotion of beauty, but a multitude of emotions, which, from their analogy, are comprehended under that one general term, so we have not one feeling of sublimity, but various analogous feelings, arising from various objects, that agree, perhaps, in no circumstance, but that of the analogous emotions which they excite.

Of feelings which are not the same, then, in every respect, it cannot surprise us, that we should not always find on analysis, the elements to be the same. Beauty, as we have seen, is an emotion of vivid delight, referred to the object which excites it; and (sublimity, as we have also seen, in tracing the progressive emotion through gradual changes of circumstances, is often only this very beauty, united with a feeling of vague indefinable grandeur in its object, and a consequent impression of delightful astonishment, intermediate between

mere admiration and awe. In relation to moral actions, it is often a combination of the pleasing emotion of beauty, with admiring astonishment and love, or respectful reverence. In many cases, however, there is no vivid delight of beauty intermingled in the compound feeling, but only astonishment, and a certain vague impression of unmeasurable greatness or power, which is more akin to terror, than to any emotion which can be said to be positively pleasurable. In some cases, indeed, there can be no question that images of terror contribute the chief elements of the emotion,-images, however, not of terror in that direct form in which it assails us, when danger is close and imminent, but of terror softened either by distance as long past, or by mixed feelings of security, that fluctuate with it in rapid alternation, when the danger is only contingently or remotely possible. Different as the elements may be in many cases, and different as the resulting emotions may also be, the different results of the different elements may yet, as complex feelings, be sufficiently analogous to be classed under one rank of emotions; though, in giving one common name to the whole, we must always be aware, that it is only a certain analogy of the feelings which we mean to express, and not one common quality which can be considered as strictly the same in all,-and that it is not the sublime, therefore, which we are philosophically to seek, but the sublimities, if I may venture so to term them,-the various objects which, in various circumstances, excite emotions, that, in all their diversity, are yet of such resemblance, as to admit of being classed together, under one common appellation.

The species of emotion to which I am next to direct your attention, is that, which, in the common realism of the language of philosophers, is said to be occasioned by the ludicrous,—an emotion of light mirth, which may be considered as opposite to that of sublimity, though not opposite in the strict sense in which beauty and ugliness are opposed. There are, indeed, some feelings of this kind, which may be said to arise from qualities that are truly the reverse of those on which sublimity depends, and in which, accordingly, the opposition is as complete as that of ugliness and beauty. In the composition of works of fancy, for example, a mere excess or diminution of the very circumstances which render a thought sublime, produces either bombast or inanity, and a consequent emotion of ridicule or gay contempt; as in the human countenance, an increase or diminution of any beautiful feature, may convert into deformity what was beauty before, and produce a corresponding change in our emotions. In this peculiar species of disproportion, when the sublime is intended, but when the images, from the inability of the author to produce and distinguish sublimity, are either overstrained or mean, consists what has been termed bathos, as rhetorically opposed to those peculiar emotions, to which, indeed, the very etymology of the term marks the opposition that has been felt.

Of the ludicrousness, which arises from this species of actual opposition of the mean or bombastic fancies of the writer to the sublimity which he wished to produce, it would, indeed, scarcely be necessary to say any thing, after the remarks that have been made on sublimity itself, any more than it would be necessary to dwell on illustrations of ugliness, after a full discussion of the opposite emotions of beauty. But the gay mirthful feeling is not always of this kind. The same species of emotion, or an emotion very nearly similar, may be felt where there is no accompanying belief of imperfection, and where,