Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres: Lecture IV — The Sublime in Writing
Having treated of grandeur or sublimity in external objects, the way seems now to be cleared, for treating, with more advantage, of the descriptions of such objects; or, of what is called the sublime in writing. Though I may appear early to enter on the consideration of this subject; yet, as the sublime is a species of writing which depends less than any other on the artificial embellishments of rhetoric, it may be examined with as much propriety here, as in any subsequent part of the lectures.
Many critical terms have unfortunately been employed in a sense too loose and vague; none more so, than that of the sublime. Every one is acquainted with the character of Caesar’s Commentaries, and of the style in which they are written: a style remarkably pure, simple, and elegant; but the most remote from the sublime of any of the classical authors. Yet this author has a German critic, Johannes Gulielmus Bergerus, who wrote no longer ago than the year 1720, pitched upon as the perfect model of the sublime, and has composed a quarto volume, entitled De naturali pulchritudine Orationis; the express intention of which is to show, that Caesar’s Commentaries contain the most complete exemplification of all Longinus’s rules relating to sublime writing. This I mention as a strong proof of the confused ideas which have prevailed, concerning this subject. The true sense of sublime writing, undoubtedly, is such a description of objects, or exhibition of sentiments, which are in themselves of a sublime nature, as shall give us strong impressions of them. But there is another very indefinite, and therefore very improper, sense, which has been too often put upon it; when it is applied to signify any remarkable and distinguishing excellency of composition; whether it raise in us the ideas of grandeur, or those of gentleness, elegance, or any other sort of beauty. In this sense, Caesar’s Commentaries may, indeed, be termed sublime, and so may many sonnets, pastorals, and love elegies, as well as Homer’s Iliad. But this evidently confounds the use of words, and marks no one species, or character, of composition whatever.
I am sorry to be obliged to observe, that the sublime is too often used in this last and improper sense, by the celebrated critic Longinus, in his treatise on this subject. He sets out, indeed, with describing it in its just and proper meaning; as something that elevates the mind above itself, and fills it with high conceptions, and a noble pride. But from this view of it he frequently departs; and substitutes in the place of it, whatever, in any strain of composition, pleases highly. Thus, many of the passages which he produces as instances of the sublime, are merely elegant, without having the most distant relation to proper sublimity; witness Sappho’s famous ode, on which he descants at considerable length. He points out five sources of the sublime. The first is boldness or grandeur in the thoughts; the second is, the pathetic; the third, the proper application of figures; the fourth, the use of tropes and beautiful expressions; the fifth, musical structure and arrangement of words. This is the plan of one who was writing a treatise of rhetoric, or of the beauties of writing in general; not of the sublime in particular. For of these five heads, only the two first have any peculiar relation to the sublime; boldness and grandeur in the thoughts, and in some instances the pathetic, or strong exertions of passion; the other three, tropes, figures, and musical arrangement, have no more relation to the sublime, than to other kinds of good writing; perhaps less to the sublime, than to any other species whatever; because it requires less the assistance of ornament. From this it appears, that clear and precise ideas on this head are not to be expected from that writer. I would not, however, be understood, as if I meant, by this censure, to represent his treatise as of small value. I know no critic, ancient or modern, that discovers a more lively relish of the beauties of fine writing, than Longinus; and he has also the merit of being himself an excellent, and in several passages, a truly sublime, writer. But as his work has been generally considered as a standard on this subject, it was incumbent on me to give my opinion concerning the benefit to be derived from it. It deserves to be consulted, not so much for distinct instruction concerning the sublime, as for excellent general ideas concerning beauty in writing.
I return now to the proper and natural idea of the sublime in composition. The foundation of it must always be laid in the nature of the object described. Unless it be such an object as, if presented to our eyes, if exhibited to us in reality, would raise ideas of that elevating, that awful and magnificent kind, which we call sublime; the description, however finely drawn, is not entitled to come under this class. This excludes all objects that are merely beautiful, gay, or elegant. In the next place, the object must not only, in itself, be sublime, but it must be set before us in such a light as is most proper to give us a clear and full impression of it; it must be described with strength, with conciseness, and simplicity. This depends, principally, upon the lively impression which the poet, or orator, has of the object which he exhibits; and upon his being deeply affected, and warmed, by the sublime idea which he would convey. If his own feeling be languid, he can never inspire us with any strong emotion. Instances, which are extremely necessary on this subject, will clearly show the importance of all the requisites which I have just now mentioned.
It is, generally speaking, among the most ancient authors, that we are to look for the most striking instances of the sublime. I am inclined to think that, the early ages of the world, and the rude unimproved state of society, are peculiarly favourable to the strong emotions of sublimity. The genius of men is then much turned to admiration and astonishment. Meeting with many objects, to them new and strange, their imagination is kept glowing, and their passions are often raised to the utmost. They think, and express themselves boldly, and without restraint. In the progress of society, the genius and manners of men undergo a change more favourable to accuracy, than to strength or sublimity.
Of all writings, ancient or modern, the sacred Scriptures afford us the highest instances of the sublime. The descriptions of the Deity, in them, are wonderfully noble; both from the grandeur of the object and the manner of representing it. What an assemblage, for instance, of awful and sublime ideas is presented to us in that passage of the xviiith psalm, where an appearance of the Almighty is described: “ In my distress I called upon the Lord, he heard my “ voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him. ' Then, the earth shook and trembled, the foundations also of the hills “ were moved; because he was wroth. He bowed the heavens, and “ came down, and darkness was under his feet; and he did ride up-“ on a Cherub, and did fly; yea, he did fly upon the wings of the “ wind. He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round “ about him were dark waters, and thick clouds of the sky.” Here, agreeably to the principles established in the last lecture, we see with what propriety and success the circumstances of darkness and terror are applied for heightening the sublime. So, also, the prophet Habakkuk, in a similar passage: “ He stood, and measured “ the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the nations. The ever-“ lasting mountains were scattered; the perpetual hills did bow; “ his ways are everlasting. The mountains saw thee; and they “ trembled. The overflowing of the water passed by. The deep “ uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high.”
The noted instance given by Longinus, from Moses, “ God said. “ let there be light; and there was light;” is not liable to the censure which I passed on some of his instances, of being foreign to the subject. It belongs to the true sublime; and the sublimity of it arises from the strong conception it gives, of an exertion of power, producing its effect with the utmost speed and facility. A thought of the same kind is magnificently amplified in the following passage of Isaiah: (chap. xliv. 24, 27, 28.) “Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb: I am the Lord
“ that maketh all things, that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, that “ spreadeth abroad the earth by myself—that saith to the deep, be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers; that saith of Cyrus, he is my “ shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure; even, saying to Je-“ rusalem, thou shalt be built; and to the temple, thy foundation “ shall be laid.” There is a passage in the psalms, which deserves to be mentioned under this head: “ God,” says the psalmist, “ stil-“ leth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tu-“ mults of the people.” The joining together two such grand objects, as the raging of the waters, and the tumults of the people, between which there is so much resemblance as to form a very natural association in the fancy, and the representing them both as subject, at one moment, to the command of God, produces a noble effect.
Homer is a poet, who, in all ages, and by all critics, has been greatly admired for sublimity; and he owes much of his grandeur to that native and unaffected simplicity which characterizes his manner. His descriptions of hosts engaging; the animation, the fire, and rapidity, which he throws into his battles, present to every reader of the Iliad, frequent instances of sublime writing. His introduction of the gods, tends often to heighten, in a high degree, the majesty of his warlike scenes. Hence Longinus bestows such high and just commendations on that passage, in the xvth book of the Iliad, where Neptune, when preparing to issue forth into the engagement is described as shaking the mountains with his steps, and driving his chariot along the ocean. Minerva, arming herself for fight in the vth book; and Apollo, in the xvth, leading on the Trojans, and flashing terror with his AEgis on the face of the Greeks, are similar instances of great sublimity added to the description of battles, by the appearances of those celestial beings. In the xxth book, where all the gods take part in the engagement, according as they severally favour either the Grecians or the Trojans, the poet’s genius is signally displayed, and the description rises into the most awful magnificence. All nature is represented as in commotion; Jupiter thunders in the heavens; Neptune strikes the earth with his trident; the ships, the city, and the mountains shake; the earth trembles to its centre; Pluto starts from his throne, in dread lest the secrets of the infernal region should be laid open to the view of mortals. The passage is worthy of being inserted.
The works of Ossian (as I have elsewhere shown) abound with
Iliad, xx. 47. &c.
* But when the powers descending swell’d the fight, Then tumult rose, fierce rage, and pale affright:
Now through the trembling shores Minerva calls,
And now she thunders from the Grecian walls.
Mars, hov’ring o’er his Troy, his terror shrouds
In gloomy tempests, and a night of clouds;
Now through each Trojan heart he fury pours,
With voice divine, from Ilion’s topmost towers —
Above, the sire of gods his thunder rolls,
And peals on peals redoubled rend the poles;
Beneath, stern Neptune shakes the solid ground,
The forests wave, the mountains nod around;
Through all her summits tremble Ida’s woods,
And from their sources boil her hundred floods:
Troy’s turrets totter on the rocking plain,
And the toss’d navies beat the heaving main.
Deep in the dismal region of the dead,
Th’ infernal monarch rear’d his horrid head,
Leapt from his throne, lest Neptune’s arm should lay His dark dominions open to the day;
And pour in light on Pluto’s drear abodes,
Abhorr’d by men, and dreadful ev’n to gods.
Such wars th’ immortals wage; such horrors rend
The world’s vast concave, when the gods contend.
examples of the sublime. The subjects of which that author treats, and the manner in which he writes, are particularly favourable to it. He possesses all the plain and venerable manner of the ancient times. He deals in no superfluous or gaudy ornaments; but throws forth his images with a rapid conciseness, which enables them to strike the mind with the greatest force. Among poets of more polished times we are to look for the graces of correct writing, for just proportion of parts, and skilfully conducted narration. In the midst of smiling scenery and pleasurable themes, the gay and the beautiful will appear, undoubtedly, to more advantage. But amidst the rude scenes of nature and of society, such as Ossian describes; amidst rocks and torrents, and whirlwinds and battles, dwells the sublime; and naturally associates itself with that grave and solemn spirit which distinguishes the author of Fingal. “As autumn’s dark storms “ pour from two echoing hills, so toward each other approached the “ heroes. As two dark streams from high rocks meet and mix, and “ roar on the plain; loud, rough, and dark, in battle met Lochlin “ and Inisfail: chief mixed his strokes with chief, and man with “ man. Steel clanging sounded on steel. Helmets are cleft on “ high: blood bursts, and smoke around. As the troubled noise “ of the ocean when roll the waves on high; as the last peal of the “ thunder of heaven; such is the noise of battle. The groan of “ the people spreads over the hills. It was like the thunder of night, “ when the cloud bursts on Cona, and a thousand ghosts shriek at “ once on the hollow wind.” Never were images of more awful sublimity employed to heighten the terror of battle.
I have produced these instances, in order to demonstrate that conciseness and simplicity are essential to sublime writing. Simplicity I place in opposition to studied and profuse ornament: and conciseness, to superfluous expression. The reason why a defect, either in conciseness or simplicity, is hurtful in a peculiar manner to the sublime, I shall endeavour to explain. The emotion occasioned in the mind by some great or noble object, raises it considerably above its ordinary pitch. A sort of enthusiasm is produced, extremely agreeable while it lasts; but from which the mind is tending every moment to fall down into its ordinary situation. Now, when an author has brought us, or is attempting to bring us, into this state; if he multiplies words unnecessarily; if he decks the sublime object which he presents to us, round and round, with glittering ornaments; nay, if he throws in any one decoration that sinks in the least below the capital image, that moment he alters the key; he relaxes the tension of the mind; the strength of the feeling is emasculated, the beautiful may remain, but the sublime is gone. When Julius Caesar said to the pilot who was afraid to put to sea with him in a storm, “ Quid times? Caesarem vehis;” we are struck with the daring magnanimity of one relying with such confidence on his cause and his fortune. These few words convey every thing necessary to give us the impression full. Lucan resolved to amplify and adorn the thought. Observe how every time he twists it round, it departs farther from the sublime, till it ends at last in tumid declamation.
Sperne minas, inquit, pelagi, ventoque furenti Trade sinum: Italiam, si, coelo auctore, recusas,
Me pete. Sola tibi causa haec est justa timoris
Victorem non nosse tuum; quem numina nunquam
Destituent; de quo male tunc Fortuna meretur
Cum post vota venit. Medias perrumpe procellas
Tutela secure mea. Cceli iste fretique
Non puppis nostrae labor est. Hanc Csesare pressam A fluctu defendet onus; nam proderit undis
Ista ratis. . . .Quid tanta strage paratur
Ignoras? quaerit pelagi coelique tumultu
Quid praestet fortuna mihi.*—phars. r. £.78,
On account of the great importance of simplicity and conciseness, I conceive rhyme, in English verse, to be, if not inconsistent with the sublime, at least very unfavourable to it. The constrained elegance of this kind of verse, and studied smoothness of the sounds, answering regularly to each other at the end of the line, though they be quite consistent with gentle emotions, yet weaken the native force of sublimity; besides, that the superfluous words which the poet is often obliged to introduce in order to fill up the rhyme, tend farther to enfeeble it. Homer’s description of the nod of Jupiter, as shaking the heavens, has been admired, in all ages, as highly sublime. Literally translated, it runs thus: “He spoke, and bending “ his sable brows, gave the awful nod; while he shook the celestial “ locks of his immortal head, all Olympus was shaken.” Mr. Pope translates it thus:
He spoke: and awful bends his sable brows,
Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod,
The stamp of fate, and sanction of a God.
High heaven with trembling the dread signal took,
And all Olympus to its centre shook.
The image is spread out, and attempted to be beautified; but it is, in truth, weakened. The third line—“The stamp of fate, and “ sanction of a God,’” is merely expletive, and introduced for no
* But Caesar still superior to distress,
Fearless, and confident of sure success.
Thus to the pilot loud:—The seas despise,
And the vain threat’ning of the noisy skies;
Though gods deny thee yon Ausonian strand,
Yet go, I charge you, go, at my command.
Thy ignorance alone can cause thy fears,
Thou know’st not what a freight thy vessel bears;
Thou know’st not I am he to whom ’tis given,
Never to want the care of watchful heaven.
Obedient fortune waits my humble thrall,
And always ready, comes before I call.
Let winds and seas, loud wars at freedom wage.
And waste upon themselves their empty rage;
A stronger, mightier daemon is thy friend,
Thou, and thy bark, on Caesar’s fate depend.
Thou stand’st amaz’d to view this dreadful scene.
And wonder’st what the gods and fortune mean;
But artfully their bounties thus they raise,
And from my danger arrogate new praise;
Amidst the fears of death they bid me live,
And still enhance what they are sure to give.
other reason but to fill up the rhyme; for it interrupts the description, and clogs the image. For the same reason, out of mere compliance with the rhyme, Jupiter is represented as shaking his locks before he gives the nod;—“Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives “ the nod,” which is trifling, and without meaning: whereas, in the original, the hair of his head shaken, is the effect of his nod, and makes a happy picturesque circumstance in the description.
The boldness, freedom, and variety of our blank verse, is infinitely more favourable than rhyme, to all kinds of sublime poetry. The fullest proof of this is afforded by Milton; an author whose genius led him eminently to the sublime. The whole first and second books of Paradise are continued instances of it. Take only, for an example, the following noted description of Satan, after his fall, appearing at the head of the infernal hosts:
He, above the rest,
In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
Stood like a tower; his form had not yet lost
All her original brightness, nor appear’d
Less than archangel ruin’d; and the excess
Of glory obscur’d: as when the sun new risen,
Looks through the horizontal misty air,
Shorn of his beams; or, from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. Darken’d so, yet shone
Above them all th’ archangel.
Here concur a variety of sources of the sublime: the principal object eminently great; a high superior nature, fallen indeed, but erecting itself against distress; the grandeur of the principal object heightened, by associating it with so noble an idea as that of the sun suffering an eclipse; this picture shaded with all those images of change and trouble, of darkness and terror, which coincide so finely with the sublime emotion; and the whole expressed in a style and versification, easy, natural, and simple, but magnificent.
I have spoken of simplicity and conciseness, as essential to sublime writing. In my general description of it, I mentioned strength, as another necessary requisite. The strength of description arises, in a great measure, from a simple conciseness; but, it supposes also something more; namely, a proper choice of circumstances in the description, so as to exhibit the object in its full and most striking point of view. For every object has several faces, so to speak, by which it may be presented to us, according to the circumstances with which we surround it; and it will appear eminently sublime, or not, in proportion as all these circumstances are happily chosen, and of a sublime kind. Here lies the great art of the writer; and, indeed, the great difficulty of sublime description. If the description be too general, and divested of circumstances, the object appears in a faint light; it makes a feeble impression, or no impression at all, on the reader. At the same time, if any trivial or improper circumstances are mingled, the whole is degraded.
• See Webb on the Beauties of Poetry.
A storm or tempest, for instance, is a sublime object in nature. But to render it sublime in description, it is not enough either to give us mere general expressions concerning the violence of the tempest, or to describe its common vulgar effects, in overthrowing trees and houses. It must be painted with such circumstances as fill the mind with great and awful ideas. This is very happily done by Virgil, in the following passage:
Ipse Pater, media nimborum in nocte, ccruscd
Fulmina molitur dextra; quo maxima motu
Terra tremit; fugere ferae; et mortalia corda
Per gentes humilis stravit pavor: Ille flagranti
Aut Atho, aut Rhodopen, aut alta Ceraunia telo
Dejicit.* Georg. i.
Every circumstance in this noble description is the production of an imagination heated and astonished with the grandeur of the object. If there be any defect, it is in the words immediately following those I have quoted: “ Ingeminant Austri, et densissimus imber where the transition is made too hastily, I am afraid, from the preceding sublime images, to a thick shower, and the blowing of the south wind; and shows how difficult it frequently is to descend with grace, without seeming to fall.
The high importance of the rule which I have been now giving, concerning the proper choice of circumstances, when description is meant to be sublime, seems to me not to have been sufficiently attended to. It has, however, such a foundation in nature, as renders the least deflexion from it fatal. When a writer is aiming at the beautiful only, his descriptions may have improprieties in them, and yet be beautiful still. Some trivial, or misjudged circumstances, can be overlooked by the reader; they make only the difference of more or less: the gay, or pleasing emotion, which he has raised, subsists still. But the case is quite different with the sublime. There, one trifling circumstance, one mean idea, is sufficient to destroy the whole charm. This is owing to the nature of the emotion aimed at by sublime description, which admits of no mediocrity, and cannot subsist in a middle state; but must either highly transport us, or, if unsuccessful in the execution, leave us greatly disgusted and displeased. We attempt to rise along with the writer; the imagination is awakened, and put upon the stretch; but it requires to be supported; and if, in the midst of its efforts, you desert it unexpectedly, down it comes with a painful shock. When Milton, in his battle of the
* The father of the gods his glory shrouds,
Involv’d in tempests, and a night of clouds;
And from the middle darkness flashing out,
By fits he deals his fiery bolts about.
Earth feels the motions of her angry God,
Her entrails tremble, and her mountains nod.
And flying beasts in forests seek abode.
Deep horror seizes every human breast;
Their pride is humbled, and their fears confest:
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.
angels, describes them as tearing up the mountains, and throwing them at one another: there are, in his description, as Mr. Addison has observed, no circumstances but what are properly sublime:
From their foundations loos’ning to and fro,
They pluck’d the seated hills, with all their load,
Rocks, waters, woods; and by the shaggy tops
Uplifting, bore them in their hands.
Whereas Claudian, in a fragment upon the wars of the giants, has contrived to render this idea of their throwing the mountains, which is in itself so grand, burlesque and ridiculous; by this single circumstance, of one of his giants with the mountain Ida upon his shoulders, and a river which flowed from the mountain, running down along the giant’s back, as he held it up in that posture. There is a description too in Virgil, which, I think, is censurable; though more slightly in this respect. It is that of the burning mountain iEtna; a subject certainly very proper to be worked up by a poet into a sublime description:
Horrificis juxta tonat iEtna minis.
Interdumque atram prorumpit ad eethera nubem,
Turbine fumantem piceo, et candente favilla;
Attollitque globos flammarum, et sidera lambit.
Interdum scopulos, avulsaque viscera mentis
Erigit eructans, liquefactaque saxa sub auras
Cum gemitu glomerat, fundoque exaestuat imo.* Aen. iii. 571.
Here, after several magnificent images, the poet concludes with personifying the mountain under this figure, u eructans viscera cum gemitu,” belching up its bowels with a groan; which, by likening the mountain to a sick or drunk person, degrades the majesty of the description. It is to no purpose to tell us, that the poet here alludes to the fable of the giant Enceladus lying under mount Aetna; and that he supposes his motions and tossings to have occasioned the fiery eruptions. He intended the description of a sublime object; and the natural ideas, raised by a burning mountain, are infinitely more lofty, than the belchings of any giant, how huge soever. The debasing effect of the idea which is here presented, will appear in a stronger light, by seeing what figure it makes in a poem of Sir Richard Blackmore’s, who, through a monstrous perversity of taste, had chosen this for the capital circumstance in his description, and thereby (as Dr. Arbuthnot humourously observes, in his Treatise on the Art of Sinking,) had represented the mountain as in a fit of the cholic.
AEtna, and all the burning mountains, find
Their kindled stores with inbred storms of wind
* Th’ port capacious, and secure from wind,
Is to the foot of thundering iEtna join’d.
By turns a pitchy cloud she rolls on high,
By turns hot embers from her entrails fly,
And flakes of mounting flames that lick the sky,
Oft from her bowels massy rocks are thrown,
And shiver’d by the force, come piece-meal down.
Oft liquid lakes of burning sulphur flow,
Fed from the fiery springs that boil below.
In this translation of Dryden’s, the debasing circumstance to which I object in the original, is, with propriety, omitted.
Blown up to rage, and roaring out complain,
As torn with inward gripes, and torturing pain;
Labouring, they cast their dreadful vomit round,
And with their melted bowels spread the ground.
Such instances show how much the sublime depends upon a just selection of circumstances; and with how great care every circumstance must be avoided, which by bordering in the least upon the mean or even upon the gay or the trifling, alters the tone of the emotion.
If it shall now be inquired, what are the proper sources of the sublime? my answer is, that they are to be looked for every where in nature. It is not by hunting after tropes, and figures, and rhetorical assistances, that we can expect to produce it. No: it stands clear, for the most part, of these laboured refinements of art. It must come unsought, if it comes at all; and be the natural offspring of a strong imagination.
Est Deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.
Wherever a great and awful object is presented in nature, or a very magnanimous and exalted affection of the human mind is displayed; thence, if you can catch the impression strongly, and exhibit it warm and glowing, you may draw the sublime. These are its only proper sources. In judging of any striking beauty in composition, whether it is, or is not, to be referred to this class, we must attend to the nature of the emotion which it raises; and only, if it be of that elevating, solemn, and awful kind, which distinguishes this feeling, we can pronounce it sublime.
From the account which I have given of the nature of the sublime, it clearly follows, that it is an emotion which can never be long protracted. The mind, by no force of genius, can be kept, for any considerable time, so far raised above its common tone; but will, of course, relax into its ordinary situation. Neither are the abilities of any human writer sufficient to furnish a long continuation of uninterrupted sublime ideas. The utmost we can expect is, that this fire of imagination should sometimes flash upon us like lightning from heaven, and then disappear. In Homer and Milton, this effulgence of genius breaks forth more frequently, and with greater lustre, than in most authors. Shakspeare also rises often into the true sublime. But no author whatever is sublime throughout. Some indeed, there are, who, by a strength and dignity in their conceptions, and a current of high ideas that runs through their whole composition, preserve the reader’s mind always in a tone nearly allied to the sublime; for which reason they may, in a limited sense, merit the name of continued sublime writers; and, in this class, we may justly place Demosthenes and Plato.
As for what is called the sublime style, it is, for the most part, a very bad one; and has no relation, whatever, to the real sublime. Persons are apt to imagine, that magnificent words, accumulated epithets, and a certain swelling kind of expression, by rising above what is usual or vulgar, contributes to, or even forms, the sublime. Nothing can be more false. In all the instances of sublime writing, which I have given, nothing of this kind appears. “ God said, let there be light; and there was light.” This is striking and sublime. But put it into what is commonly called the sublime style: “The “ sovereign arbiter of nature, by the potent energy of a single word, commanded the light to exist;” and, as Boileau has well observed, the style indeed is raised, but the thought is fallen. In general, in all good writing, the sublime lies in the thought, not in the words; and when the thought is truly noble, it will for the most part, clothe itself in a native dignity of language. The sublime, indeed, rejects mean, low, or trivial expressions; but it is equally an enemy to such as are turgid. The main secret of being sublime, is to say great things in few and plain words. It will be found to hold without exception, that the most sublime authors are the simplest in their style; and wherever you find a writer, who affects a more than ordinary pomp and parade of words, and is always endeavouring to magnify his subject by epithets, there you may immediately suspect, that, feeble in sentiment, he is studying to support himself by expression.
The same unfavourable judgment we must pass, on all that laboured apparatus with which some writers introduce a passage, or description, which they intend shall be sublime; calling on their readers to attend, invoking their muse, or breaking forth into general, unmeaning exclamations, concerning the greatness, terribleness, or majesty of the object, which they are to describe. Mr. Addison, in his Campaign, has fallen into an error of this kind, when about to describe the battle of Blenheim.
But O my muse! what numbers wilt thou find
To sing the furious troops in battle join’d?
Methinks, I hear the drum’s tumultuous sound,
The victor’s shouts, and dying groans, confound; &c.
Introductions of this kind, are a forced attempt in a writer, to spur up himself, and his reader, when he finds his imagination begin to flag. It is like taking artificial spirits in order to supply the want of such as are natural. By this observation, however, I do not mean to pass a general censure on Mr. Addison’s Campaign, which in several places, is far from wanting merit; and in particular, the noted comparison of his hero to the angel who rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm, is a truly sublime image.
The faults opposite to the sublime are chiefly two: the frigid, and the bombast. The frigid consists, in degrading an object or sentiment, which is sublime in itself, by our mean conception of it; or by our weak, low, and childish description of it. This betrays entire absence, or at least great poverty of genius. Of this there are abundance of examples, and these commented upon with much humour, in the Treatise on the Art of Sinking, in Dean Swift’s works; the instances taken chiefly from Sir Richard Blackmore. One of these, I had occasion already to give, in relation to mount Aetna, and it were needless to produce any more. The bombast lies, in forcing an ordinary or trivial object out of its rank, and endeavouring to raise into the sublime; or, in attempting to exalt a sublime object beyond all natural and reasonable bounds. Into this error, which is but too common, writers of genius may sometimes fall, by unluckily losing sight of the true point of the sublime. This is also called fustian, or rant. Shakspeare, a great but incorrect genius, is not unexceptionable here. Dryden and Lee, in their tragedies, abound with it.
Thus far of the Sublime, of which I have treated fully, because it is so capital an excellency in fine writing, and because clear and precise ideas on this head are, as far as I know, not to be met with in critical writers.
Before I conclude this lecture, there is one observation which I choose to make at this time; I shall make it once for all, and hope it will be afterwards remembered. It is with respect to the instances of faults, or rather blemishes and imperfections, which, as I have done in this lecture, I shall hereafter continue to take, when I can, from writers of reputation. I have not the least intention thereby to disparage their character in the general. I shall have other occasions of doing equal justice to their beauties. But it is no reflection on any human performance, that it is not absolutely perfect. The task would be much easier for me, to collect instances of faults from bad writers. But they would draw no attention, when quoted from books which nobody reads. And I conceive, that the method which I follow, will contribute more to make the best authors be read with pleasure, when one properly distinguishes their beauties from their faults; and is led to imitate and admire only what is worthy of imitation and admiration.