CRITICISM-GENIUS-PLEASURES OF

TASTE-SUBLIMITY IN OBJECTS.

Q. What is Criticism?

A. The application of taste and good sense to the fine arts.

Q. What is the design of Criticism?

A. To distinguish what is beautiful and faulty in every performance.

Q. On what is it founded?

A. On experience; on the observation of such beauties as have been found to please mankind most generally.

Q. What is its importance?

A. Great; for no genius is perfect, and every writer and artist may receive assistance from critical observations upon the beauties and faults of those who have gone before them. Q. Are not Critics great abridgers of the native liberty of genius?

A. No. For every good writer will be pleased to have his work examined by the principles of sound understanding and true

taste.

Q. Have not some works been admired which have transgressed the rules of Critics?

A. Yes. Such are the plays of Shakespeare; which, considered as dramatic poems, are very irregular; but they possess beauties so great as to overpower all censure.

Q. What is Genius?

A. It is that talent or aptitude which we receive from nature, for excelling in some one thing.

Q. How does it differ from Taste?

A. Taste consists, in the power of judging : Genius, in the power of executing.

Q. Which is the most limited in the sphere of its operations?

A. Genius. Many have an excellent taste in music, poetry, painting, and eloquence; but a finished performer, in all these arts, is seldom found.

Q. What may be said of an Universal Genius ?

A. That he is not likely to excel in any thing.

Q. What practical lesson may be learned from this ?

A. That young persons should pursue, with ardour, that path which nature has marked out for their peculiar exertions.

Q. Whe first instituted a regular inquiry into the source of the pleasures of Taste? A. Mr. Addison, in his essay on the pleasures of the imagination.

Q. How did he arrange these pleasures? A. Under three heads-Beauty, Grandeur, and Novelty.

Q. What have been the advances in this subject, since his time?

A. Small.

Q. To what is this owing?

A. To that thinness and subtilty which are

found to be the properties of all the feelings of Taste.

Q. Are the pleasures of Taste necessary for the common purposes of life?

A. No: and are therefore proofs of the benevolence of the Deity, for they greatly enlarge the bounds of human happiness.*

Q. In what consists a sublime emotion ? A. In an admiration and expansion of the mind, attended with a degree of awfulness and solemnity, approaching to severity; it is the opposite of the gay and brisk emotion raised by beautiful objects.

Q. In what does the simplest form of exter nal grandeur appear?

A. In the vast and boundless prospects presented to us by nature,-such as widely extended plains; the firmament of heaven; the expanse of the ocean.

Q. Does all vastness produce the impression of sublimity?

A. Yes. Remove all bounds from any object, and you render it sublime. Hence, infinite space; endless numbers; and eternal duration, fill the mind with great ideas.

Q. What is the most copious source of sublime ideas?

Not content

"With every food of life to nourish Man;
"By kind illusions of the wandering sense,
"Thou mak'st all nature, Beauty to his eye,
"Or Music to his ear."

AKENSIDE.

A. The exertion of great power and force. Hence, the grandeur of earthquakes and burning mountains; of great conflagrations; of the stormy ocean and overflowing waters; of tempests of wind; of thunder and lightning; of the war-horse; and of battles.

Q. What effect have darkness, solitude, and silence?

A. They tend, greatly, to assist the sublime. The firmament filled with stars, strikes the imagination with a more awful grandeur than when enlightened by the sun; the deep sound of a bell at midnight, affects the mind more than at noon.*

Q. What other things are favourable to the sublime?

A. Obscurity, as in an indistinct vision ;t and Disorder, as in a wild mass of rocks.

* Darkness is very commonly applied for adding sublimity to all our ideas of the Deity. "He maketh "darkness his pavilion; he dwelleth in the thick "cloud." So Milton:

How oft, amidst

Thick clouds and dark, does heaven's all-ruling Sire
Choose to reside, his glory unobscur'd,

And, with the majesty of darkness, round
Circles his throne-

+ We may see this fully exemplified in the follow-
ing noble passage from the book of Job.
"In thoughts
"from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth
"on men, fear came upon me, and trembling, which
"made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed
"before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up: it
"stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof;

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What conveys an idea of sublimity in buildings?

A. Greatness of dimensions, united with greatness of manner. A Gothic Cathedral raises ideas of grandeur by its size, its height, its awful obscurity, its strength, its antiquity, and its durability.

Q. What other class of sublime objects is there, besides what is found in the works of nature ?

A. That which arises from certain exertions of the human mind, from certain affections and actions of our fellow-creatures; which may be called the moral or sentimental sublime*.

Q. Is high virtue essential to the moral sublime ?

A. It increases it; but there is sublimity in the acts of the splendid conqueror, and the daring conspirator.

Q. What is the fundamental quality of the sublime?

A. Some have supposed it to be amplitude; others, terror; but mighty force or power has a better title to it.

66 an image was before mine eyes; there was silence; "and I heard a voice-Shall mortal man be more just "than God?" (Job iv. 15.)

* Porus, taken prisoner by Alexander, after a gallant defence, being asked in what manner he would be treated? answered, “Like a king " Cæsar chided the pilot who was afraid in the storm, with "Quid times, Cæsarem vehis?"