Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

Ασεβᾶς μίν ἐσιν ανθρώπε τὰς παρὰ τὸ Θεὸ χάριτας ἀλιμαζειν.
EPICT, apud Arrian. II. 23.

LONDON?
Printed in the Year MDCCXLIV.

[blocks in formation]

T

232

The DESIGN.

HERE are certain powers in human nature which feem to hold a middle place between the organs of bodily fenfe and the faculties of moral perception: they have been called by a very general name, The Powers of Imagination. Like the external fenfes, they relate to matter and motion; and at the fame time, give the mind ideas analogous to thofe of moral approbation and diflike. As they are the inlets of fome of the most exquifite pleasures we are acquainted with, men of warm and fenfible tempers have fought means to recall the delightful perceptions they afford, independent of the objects which originally produced them. This gave fe to the imitative or defigning arts; fome of which, like painting and Sculpture, directly copy the external appearances which were admired in nature; others like mufic and poetry, bring them back to remembrance by signs univerfally established and understood.

But thefe arts as they grew more correct and deliberate, were naturally led to extend their imitation beyond the peculiar objects of the imaginative powers; efpecially poetry, which making use of language as the inftrument by which it imitates, is confequently become an unlimited reprefentative of every species and mode of being. Yet as their primary intention was only to express the objects of imagination, and as they still abound chiefly in ideas of that class, they of courfe retain their original character, and all the pleasures they excite, are term'd in general, Pleasures of Imagination.

The

The defign of the following poem is to give a view of thefe in the largest acceptation of the term; fo that whatever our imagination feels from the agreeable appearances of nature, and all the various entertainment we meet with either in poetry, painting, mufic, or any of the elegant arts, might be deducible from one or other of thefe principles in the conftitution of the human mind, which are here establish'd and explain'd.

In executing this general plan, it was necessary first of all to diftinguish the imagination from our other faculties, and then to charactarize thofe original forms or properties of being about which it is converfant, and which are by nature adapted to it, as light is to the eyes, or truth to the understanding. Thefe properties Mr. Addison Spectator had reduc'd to the three general claffes of greatness, noVol 6th velty and beauty; and into these we may analize every object, however complex, which properly speaking, is delightful to the imagination. But fuch an object may also include many other fources of pleasure, and its beauty, or novelty, or grandeur, will make a stronger impreffion by reafon of this concurrence. Befides this, the imitative arts, especially poetry, owe much of their effect to a fimilar exhibition of properties quite foreign to the imagination; infomuch that in every line of the most applauded poems, we meet with either ideas drawn from the external fenfes, or truths difcover'd to the understanding, or illuftrations of contrivance and final caufes, or above all the reft, with circumstances proper to awaken and engage the paffions. It were therefore neceffary to enume-. rate and exemplify thefe different species of pleasure: eSpecially that from the paffions, which as it is fupreme in the nobleft works of human genius, fo being in fome particulars not a little furprizing, gave an opportunity to enliven the didactic turn of the poem, by introducing a biece of machinery to account for the appearance. Af

After thefe parts of the fubject, which hold chiefly of admiration, or naturally warm and intereft the mind, a pleasure of a very different nature, that from ridicule, came next to be confidered. As this is the foundation of the comic manner in all the arts, and has been but very imperfectly treated by moral writers, it was thought proper to give it a particular illuftration, and to diftinguish the general fources from which the ridicule of characters is deriv'd. Here too a change of file became neceffary; fuch a one, as might yet be confiftent, if poffible, with the general taste of compofition in the ferious parts of the fubject nor is it an easy task to give any tolerable force to images of this kind, without running either into the gigantic expreffions of the mock-heroic, or the familiar and pointed raillery of profess'd fatire; neither of which would have been proper here.

The materials of all imitation being thus laid open, nothing now remain'd but to illuftrate fome particular pleasures which arife either from the relations of different objects one to another, or from the nature of imitation itself. Of the firft kind is that various and complicated refemblance exifting between feveral parts of the material and immaterial worlds, which is the foundation of metaphor and wit. As it feems in a great measure to depend on the early affociations of our ideas, and as this habit of affociating is the fource of many pleasures and pains in life, and on that account, bears a great share in the influence of poetry and the other arts, it is therefore mention'd here and its effects defcrib'd. Then follows a general account of the production of thefe elegant arts, and the fecondary pleasure, as it is call'd, arifing from the refemblance of their imitations to the original appearances of nature. After which, the defign is clos'd with fome reflexions on the general conduct of the powers of imagination,

« ZurückWeiter »