Individuals are sometimes so constituted that their articulation is always a pure copy of some one else. The pre-occupation of the mind is so great as to guide all the vocal efforts into a set channel.

14. Mimicry supplies interesting illustrations of the principles now in discussion. The mimic needs in himself a large compass of actions and movements, or a various spontaneity, and adds thereto a well-marked susceptibility to the actions and demeanour of other men. In truth, if his talent is of the highest order, it is because his mind and his actions are not his own; whatever he does, he is haunted by some other person's example, or some foregone model. It is related of Mathews that, while he could imitate the manners and even the language and thoughts of the greatest orators of his time, he was incapable of giving a simple address, in his own with any tolerable fluency.

person,

15. The case of Intellectual imitations is in no respect essentially different from the other kinds. In copying a style of composition, we absorb the original through either involuntary attraction, or express study; and in this mood all efforts of our own, fall under the control of the guiding model. Sometimes we imitate what has seized hold of our mind by a special charm, as with our favourite authors; at other times we get possessed of another man's ideas, from a natural bent and impressibility, and reproduce them as a consequence. A large proportion of literature and art must necessarily consist of copies and echoes from the great originals.

16. A certain number of the Fine Arts derive their subjects from natural things which they copy and adapt; and these are called the Imitative arts; they are principally Imitative (as opposed to effusive) Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture; the Stage and Pantomime; and a small portion of the art of Decoration. The remaining members of the class, namely, Architecture, Music, Decoration in general, Refined Address, are but in a very slight degree imitative of originals in nature, and apply themselves at once to the gratification of our various sensibilities, without being encumbered with any extraneous

condition, such as fidelity to some prototype. I cannot regard the imitation of nature occurring in the first-named class, in any other light than as an accident; but the fact once occurring, a certain deference has to be paid to it. Where we profess to imitate, we ought undoubtedly to be faithful. Not, I imagine, because a higher artistic charm thereby arises, but because of the revulsive shock that misrepresentation is liable to produce. If the poet draws from reality, he ought not to give a misleading picture, seeing that we receive his compositions, not solely as pleasing melodies, and touching images, but also as narratives and descriptions of human life. There is, doubtless, a limit to what we are to expect from an artist, who must be mainly engrossed with the effects proper to Art, and cannot be, at the same time, a botanist, a zoologist, a geologist, a meteorologist, an anatomist, and a geographer.

17. Although I conceive that fidelity, in the imitative class of arts, is to be looked upon, in the first instance, as avoiding a stumbling-block, rather than imparting a charm, there are still some respects wherein the aesthetic pleasure is enhanced by it. We are drawn by sympathy towards one that has attended to the same objects as ourselves, or that has seized and put into vivid prominence what we have felt without expressing to ourselves. The coincidence of mind with mind is always productive of the lightening charm of mutual support; and, in some circumstances, there is an additional effect of agreeable surprise. Thus, when an artist not merely produces in his picture the ordinary features that strike every one, but includes all the minuter objects that escape common notice, we sympathize with his attention, we admire his powers of observation, and become, as it were, his pupils in extending our study and knowledge of nature and life. We feel a pungent surprise at discovering, for the first time, what has been long before our eyes; and so the realistic and minute artist labours at this species of effect. Moreover, we are brought forward as judges of the execution of a distinct purpose; we have to see whether he that is bent on imitation, does that part of his work well or ill, and admire the power

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displayed in it, if our verdict is favourable. There is, too, a certain exciting effect in the reproduction of an appearance in some foreign material, as when a plane surface yields the impressions of solid effect, and canvas or stone imitates the human appearance. Finally, the sentiment of reality and truth, as opposed to fiction or falsehood, appealing to our practical urgencies, disposes us to assign a value to every work where truth is strongly aimed at, and to derive an additional satisfaction, when fidelity of rendering is allied with artistic charm. Thus Imitation, which, properly speaking, is immaterial to art as such, just as there is little or no place for it in music, architecture, or the decoration of the person, becomes the centre of a class of agreeable or acceptable effects. These effects are the more prized, that we have been surfeited with the purely æsthetic ideals. We turn refreshed from the middle age romance, to the graphic novel of our own time.

The mental peculiarity of being strongly arrested by his subject original, must attach to the imitative artist. The face of nature must seize his eye, engross his mind, and kindle his feelings; his pencil is then constrained to follow the outer world, rather than an inner, or ideal one. A Michael Angelo invents forms not found in nature, although observing a certain consistency with what nature presents. Such a man is the reverse of an imitative artist, and provides none of the effects specified in the last paragraph, although abounding in an impressiveness and grandeur of his

own.

CHAPTER XIII.

OF IDEAL EMOTION.

1. THE object of the present chapter is to resume and expand what has been said in the introduction respecting the persistence of emotional states in idea; the continuance of the tremor and excitement for a certain length of time after the object has ceased, or the stimulus is withdrawn. Much of our pleasure and pain is of this persisting kind; being the prolongation of a wave once commenced, and not immediately subsiding. The pleasurable impression of a work of art, a piece of music, a friendly interview, may vibrate for hours, or cast a radiance over an entire day; while the depression of some mortifying occurrence may cast a shadow of like duration.

A distinction is to be made between the emotion persisting of itself, and the persistence of it by virtue of the ideal continuance of the object. If, in the cases above quoted, we retain a vivid intellectual impression of the thing that awakened the pleasure or pain, as the picture, the story, or the mortifying incident, we retain in our mind, although in an ideal form, the exciting cause of the feeling, and therefore the emotional tremor is not properly self-sustaining. often as we remember the objects of our agreeable associations, we are liable to recover a certain gleam of their peculiar delight; but here the ideality is, strictly speaking, in the objects themselves. The pleasures and pains of the ideal life, are thus a mixture of two modes of persistence-the one the imagery of outward things, or whatever is the antecedent,

As

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or cause, of an emotional wave; the other the wave, or excited consciousness itself.

Throughout our whole exposition of the feelings, we have been careful to note this character of continuance, or recoverability in idea, as belonging to each in a greater or less degree. We have seen that the muscular feelings and organic sensations have little of the quality, that the sensations of hearing and sight have it in a higher degree, and that the special emotions treated of in the present book are in general endowed with a considerable share of endurability.

2. It is now to be considered what are the circumstances and conditions affecting the ideal subsistence of states of feeling; on which subject we find a considerable complication, amounting even to apparent contradiction. At one time a present feeling will suggest and support one of its own kindred, at another time the present condition will urge powerfully the revival or recollection of some opposite one. The actual sensation of cold will, in some circumstances, permit only ideas of cold, in other circumstances ideas of warmth. There are modes of misery that allow of recollections only of misery. There are also modes of actual suffering compatible with ideal bliss. We must endeavour, by a minute investigation, to clear up and reconcile these paradoxical results.

3. The continuance of the emotional tremor has obviously for its first condition the state of the physical organs involved in the act of maintaining it. The central brain, and the different muscles and secreting glands concerned in each case, are the medium and instrumentality for sustaining the excitement, after the stimulus, as well as during its presence. There is a power natural to each constitution of persisting, for a certain length of time, in a wave once commenced. The persistence is, as often remarked, unequal for different emotions; and the nervous system is not always prepared to give a uniform support to the same emotion. A certain health, freshness, and vigour are requisite for the proper carrying on of this, or of any other mental function; and as the