the imagination with that warmth and violence as the beauty that appears in our proper species; the language would certainly have been more pure and elegant if he had said, that it does not work upon the imagination with such warmth and violence, as the beauty that appears in our own species.

This consists either in the gaiety or variety of colours, in the symmetry and proportion of parts, in the arrange. ment and disposition of bodies, or in a just mixture and concurrence of all together. Among these several kinds of Beauty, the eye takes most delight in colours.

To the language here I see no objection that can be made.

We no where meet with a more glorious or pleasing show in nature than what appears in the heavens at the rising and setting of the sun, which is wholly made up of those different stains of light that shew themselves in clouds of a different situation.

The chief ground of criticism on this sentence, is the disjointed situation of the relative which. Grammatically, it refers to the rising and setting of the sun. But the author meant, that it should refer to the show which appears in the heavens at that time. It is too common among Authors, when they are writing without much care, to make such particles as this, and which, refer not to any particular antecedent word, but to the tenour of some phrase, or perhaps the scope of some whole sentence, which has gone before. This practice saves them trouble in marshalling their words, and arranging a period: but though it may leave their meaning intelligible, yet it renders that meaning much less perspicuous, determined, and precise than it might otherwise have been. error I have pointed out, might have been avoided

The

by a small alteration in the construction of the sentence, after some such manner as this: We no where meet with a more glorious and pleasing show in nature than what is formed in the heavens at the rising and setting of the sun, by the different stains of light which shew themselves in clouds of different situations. Our Author writes, in clouds of a different situation, by which he means, clouds that differ in situation from each other. But as this is neither the obvious nor grammatical meaning of his words, it was necessary to change the expression, as I have done, into the plural number.

For this reason we find the poets, who are always addressing themselves to the imagination, borrowing more of their epithets from colours than from any other topic.

On this sentence nothing occurs, except a remark similar to what was made before, of loose connection with the sentence which precedes. For, though he begins with saying, For this reason, the foregoing sentence, which was employed about the clouds and the sun, gives no reason for the general proposition he now lays down. The reason to which he refers was given two sentences before, when he observed that the eye takes more delight in colours than in any other beauty; and it was with that sentence that the present one should have stood immediately connected.

f

As the fancy delights in every thing that is great, strange, or beautiful, and is still more pleased, the more it finds of these perfections in the same object, so it is capable of receiving a new satisfaction by the assistance of another sense.

Another sense here, means grammatically, another

sense than fancy. For there is no other thing in the period to which this expression, another sense, can at all be opposed. He had not for some time made mention of any sense whatever. He forgot to add, what was undoubtedly in his thoughts, another sense than that of sight.

Thus any continued sound, as the music of birds, or a fall of water, awakens every moment the mind of the beholder, and makes him more attentive to the several beauties of the place which lie before him. Thus, if there arises a fragrancy of smells or perfumes, they heighten the pleasures of the imagination, and make even the colours and verdure of the landscape appear more agreeable: for the ideas of both senses recommend each other, and are pleasanter together than when they enter the mind separately; as the different colours of a picture, when they are well-disposed, set off one another, and receive an additional beauty from the advantage of their situation.

Whether Mr. Addison's theory here be just or not may be questioned. A continued sound, such as that of a fall of water, is so far from awakening every moment the mind of the beholder, that nothing is more likely to lull him asleep. It may, indeed, please the imagination, and heighten the beauties of the scene; but it produces this effect, by a soothing, not by an awakening influence. With regard to the Style, nothing appears exceptionable. The flow, both of language and of ideas, is very agreeable. The Author continues to the end the same pleasing train of thought which had run through the rest of the Paper; and leaves us agreeably employed in comparing together different degrees of Beauty.

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LECTURE XXII.

CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE STYLE IN N°413 OF THE SPECTATOR.

THOUGH in yesterday's Paper we considered how every thing that is great, new, or beautiful is apt to affect the imagination with pleasure, we must own, that it is impossible for us to assign the necessary cause of this pleasure, because we know neither the nature of an idea nor the substance of a human soul, which might help us to discover the conformity or disagreeableness of the one to the other; and therefore, for want of such a light, all that we can do in speculations of this kind is to reflect on those operations of the soul that are most agreeable, and to range under their proper heads what is pleasing or displeasing to the mind, without being able to trace out the several necessary and efficient causes from whence the pleasure or displeasure arises. i

This sentence, considered as an introductory one, must be acknowledged to be very faulty. An introductory sentence should never contain any thing that can in any degree fatigue or puzzle the reader. When an author is entering on a new branch of his subject, informing us of what he has done, and what he purposes farther to do, we naturally expect that he should express himself in the simplest and most

perspicuous manner possible. But the sentence now before us is crowded and indistinct; containing three separate propositions, which, as I shall afterwards shew, required separate sentences to unfold them. Mr. Addison's chief excellency as a writer lay in describing and painting. There he is great; but in methodizing and reasoning he is not so eminent. As, besides the general fault of prolixity and indistinctness, this sentence contains several inaccuracies, I shall be obliged to enter into a minute discussion of its structure and parts; a discussion which to many readers will appear tedious, and which therefore they will naturally pass over; but which, to those who are studying composition, I hope may prove of some benefit.

Though in yesterday's Paper we considered. — The import of though is notwithstanding that. When it appears in the beginning of a sentence, its relative generally is yet and it is employed to warn us, after we have been informed of some truth, that we are not to infer from it some other thing which we might perhaps have expected to follow: as, "Though "virtue be the only road to happiness, yet it does not "permit the unlimited gratification of our desires." Now it is plain, that there was no such opposition between the subject of yesterday's Paper, and what the Author is now going to say, between his asserting a fact, and his not being able to assign the cause of that fact, has rendered the use of this adversative particle though either necessary or proper in the introduction. We considered how every thing that is great, new, or beautiful, is apt to affect the imagination with pleasure. The adverb how signifies, either the means by which, or the manner in which, something is