ly to every motion, is, I will take upon me to affirm, utterly inconceivable. Yet the whole of the paragraph from which this quotation is taken hath such a speciousness in it, that it is a hundred to one even a judicious reader will not, on the first perusal, be sensible of the defect.

4. THE MARVELLOUS.

The last species of nonsense to be exemplified I shall denominate the marvellous. It is the characteristic of this kind that it astonishes and even confounds by the boldness of the affirmations, which always appear flatly to contradict the plainest dietates of common sense, and thus to involve a manifest absurdity. I know no sort of authors that so frequently abound in this manner as some artists who have attempted to philosophize on the principles of their art. I shall give an example from the English translation of a French book,* as there is no example which I can remember at present in any book written originally in our own language: "Nature," says this writer, "in herself is unseemly, and he who copies her servilely, and without artifice, will always produce something poor, and of a mean taste. What is called load in colours and lights can only proceed from a profound knowledge in the values of colours, and from an admirable industry, which makes the painted objects appear more true, if I may say so, than the real ones. In this sense it may be asserted, that in Rubens's pieces Art is above Nature, and Nature only a copy of that great master's works." What a strange subversion, or inversion, if you will, of all the most obvious, and hitherto undisputed truths. Not satisfied with affirming the unseemliness of every production of Nature, whom this philosopher hath discovered to be an arrant bungler, and the immense superiority of human Art, whose humble scholar dame Nature might be proud to be accounted, he riseth to asseverations which shock all our notions, and utterly defy the powers of apprehension. Painting is found to be the original; or, rather, Rubens's pictures are the original, and Nature is the copy; and, indeed, very consequentially, the former is represented as the standard by which the beauty and perfections of the latter are to be estimated. Nor do the qualifying phrases, if I may say so, and in this sense it may be asserted, make here the smallest odds. For as this sublime critic has no where hinted what sense it is which he denominates this sense, so I believe no reader will be able to conjecture what the author might have said, and not absurdly said, to the same effect. The misfortune is, that when the expression is stripped of the absurd meaning,† there remains

* De Piles's Principles of Painting.

For the propriety and import of this expression, see ch. vii., sec. ii

nothing but balderdash,* an unmeaning jumble of words which at first seem to announce some great discovery.† Specimens of the same kind are sometimes also to be met with in the poets. Witness the famous protestation of an heroic lover in one of Dryden's plays :

"My wound is great, because it is so small."

The nonsense of which was properly exposed by an extemporary verse of the Duke of Buckingham, who, on hearing this line, exclaimed in the house,

"It would be greater were it none at all."

Hyperbolé, carried to extravagance, is much of a piece, and never fails to excite disgust, if not laughter, instead of admiration. Of this the famous laureat just now quoted, though indeed a very considerable genius, affords, among many other striking instances, that which follows:

"That star, that at your birth shone out so bright,

It stain'd the duller sun's meridian light."‡

Such vile fustian ought to be carefully avoided by every wri

ter.

Thus I have illustrated, as far as examples can illustrate, some of the principal varieties to be remarked in unmeaning sentences or nonsense-the puerile, the learned, the profound, and the marvellous; together with those other classes of the unintelligible, arising either from confusion of thought, accompanied with intricacy of expression, or from an excessive aim at excellence in the style and manner.

So much for the explication of the first rhetorical quality of style, perspicuity, with the three ways of expressing one's self by which it may be injured-the obscure, the double meaning, and the unintelligible.

The latter part of the sentence was thus expressed in the first edition, "A jumble of bold words without meaning." To this phraseology exception was taken, which, though not entirely just, appears to have arisen from some obscurity, perhaps ambiguity, in the expression. This, I hope, is re moved by the alteration now made.

Since writing the above observations, I have seen De Piles's original performance, and find that his translator hath, in this place at least, done him no injustice. The whole passage in the French is as follows: "La Nature est ingrate d'elle-même, et qui s'attacheroit à la copier simplement comme elle est et sans artifice, feroit toujours quelque chose de pauvre et d'un très petit goût. Ce que vous nommez exagerations dans les couleurs, et dans les lumieres, est une admirable industrie qui fait paroître les objets peints plus véritables, s'il faut ainsi dire, que les véritables mêmes. C'est ainsi que les tableaux de Rubens sont plus beaux que la Nature, laquelle semble n'etre que la copie des ouvrages de ce grand homme."-Recueil de divers Ouvrages sur la Peinture et le Coloris, par M. de Piles, Paris, 1755, p. 225. This is rather worse than the English. The qualifying phrase in the last sentence, we find, is the translator's, who seems, out of sheer modesty, to have brought it to cover nudities. His intention was good, but this is such a rag as cannot answer. + Dryden on the Restoration.

A A

CHAPTER VII.

WHAT IS THE CAUSE THAT NONSENSE SO OFTEN ESCAPES BEING DETECTED, BOTH BY THE WRITER AND BY THE READER?

SECTION I.

THE NATURE AND POWER OF SIGNS, BOTH IN SPEAKING AND IN THINKING.

BEFORE quitting the subject of perspicuity, it will not be amiss to inquire into the cause of this strange phenomenon ; that even a man of discernment should write without meaning, and not be sensible that he hath no meaning; and that judicious people should read what hath been written in this way, and not discover the defect. Both are surprising, but the first much more than the last. A certain remissness will at times seize the most attentive reader, whereas an author of discernment is supposed to have carefully digested all that he writes. It is reported of Lopez de Vega, a famous Spanish poet, that the Bishop of Beller, being in Spain, asked him to explain one of his sonnets, which he said he had often read, but never understood. Lopez took up the sonnet, and after reading it several times, frankly acknowledged that he did not understand it himself; a discovery which the poet probably never made before.

But though the general fact hath frequently been observed, I do not find that any attempt hath been yet made to account for it. Berkeley, indeed, in his Principles of Human Knowledge, hath suggested a theory concerning language, though not with this view, which, if well founded, will go far to remove the principal difficulty: "It is a received opinion," says that author," that language has no other end but the communicating our ideas, and that every significant name stands for an idea. This being so, and it being withal certain that names, which yet are not thought altogether insignificant, do not always mark out particular conceivable ideas, it is straightway concluded that they stand for abstract notions. That there are many names in use among speculative men which do not always suggest to others determinate particular ideas, is what nobody will deny. And a little attention will discover, that it is not necessary (even in the strictest reasonings) significant names which stand for ideas should, every time they are used, excite in the understanding the ideas they are made to stand for. In reading and discoursing, names being for the most part used as letters are in algebra, in which, though a particular quantity be marked by each letter, yet to proceed right, it is not requisite that in every step each letter suggest to your thoughts that particular quantity

it was appointed to stand for."* The same principles have been adopted by the author of a Treatise of Human Nature, who, speaking of abstract ideas, has the following words: "I believe every one who examines the situation of his mind in reasoning will agree with me, that we do not annex distinct and complete ideas to every term we make use of, and that, in talking of government, church, negotiation, conquest, we seldom spread out in our minds all the simple ideas of which these complex ones are composed. "Tis, however, observable, that, notwithstanding this imperfection, we may avoid talking nonsense on these subjects, and may perceive any repugnance among the ideas as well as if we had a full comprehension of them. Thus if, instead of saying that in war the weaker have always recourse to negotiation, we should say that they have always recourse to conquest, the custom which we have acquired of attributing certain relations to ideas still follows the words, and makes us immediately perceive the absurdity of that proposition." Some excellent observations to the same purpose have also been made by the elegant Inquirer into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

Now that the notions on this subject maintained by these ingenious writers, however strange they may appear upon a superficial view, are well founded, is at least presumable from this consideration; that if, agreeably to the common hypothesis, we could understand nothing that is said but by actually comparing in our minds all the ideas signified, it I would be impossible that nonsense should ever escape undiscovered, at least that we should so far impose upon ourselves as to think we understand what in reality is not to be understood. We should, in that case, find ourselves in the same situation, when an unmeaning sentence is introduced into a discourse, wherein we find ourselves when a sentence is quoted in a language of which we are entirely ignorant: we are never in the smallest danger of imagining that we apprehend the meaning of the quotation.

But, though a very curious fact hath been taken notice of by those expert metaphysicians, and such a fact as will perhaps account for the deception we are now considering, yet the fact itself, in my apprehension, hath not been sufficiently accounted for. That mere sounds, which are used only as signs, and have no natural connexion with the things whereof they are signs, should convey knowledge to the mind, even when they excite no idea of the things signified, must appear at first extremely mysterious. It is, therefore, worth while to consider the matter more closely; and in order to this, it will be proper to attend a little to the three following con* Introd., sect. xix. † Vol i., book i., part i., sect. vii. + Part v.

nexions: first, that which subsisteth among things; secondly, that which subsisteth between words and things; thirdly, that which subsisteth among words, or the different terms used in the same language.

As to the first of these connexions, namely, that which subsisteth among things, it is evident that this is original and natural. There is a variety of relations to be found in things by which they are connected. Such are, among several others, resemblance, identity,* equality, contrariety, cause and effect, concomitancy, vicinity in time or place. These we become acquainted with by experience; and they prove, by means of association, the source of various combinations of ideas and abstractions, as they are commonly denominated. Hence mixed modes and distinctions into genera and species, of the orign of which I have had occasion to speak already.† As to the second connexion, or that which subsisteth between words and things, it is obvious, as hath been hinted formerly, that this is not a natural and necessary, but an artificial and arbitrary connexion. Nevertheless, though this connexion hath not its foundation in the nature of things, but in the inventions of men, its effect upon the mind is much the same; for, having often had occasion to observe particular words used as signs of particular things, we hence contract a habit of associating the sign with the thing signified, insomuch that either being presented to the mind frequently introduces or occasions the apprehension of the other. Custom, in this instance, operates precisely in the same manner as in the formation of experience formerly explained. Thus, certain sounds, and the ideas of things not naturally related to them, come to be as strongly linked in our conceptions as the ideas of things naturally related to one another.

As to the third connexion, or that which subsisteth among words, I would not be understood to mean any connexion among the words considered as sounds, such as that which results from resemblance in pronunciation, equality in the number of syllables, sameness of measure or cadence; I mean solely that connexion or relation which comes gradually to subsist among the different words of a language, in the minds of those who speak it, and which is merely consequent on this, that those words are employed as signs of connected or related things. It is an axiom in geometry, that things equal to the same thing are equal to one anoth

It may be thought improper to mention identity as a relation by which different things are connected; but it must be observed, that I only mean so far different as to constitute distinct objects to the mind. Thus the consideration of the same person, when a child and when a man, is the consideration of different objects, between which there subsists the relation of identity.

+ Book i., chap. v., sect. ii., part ii. On the Formation of Experience.