diffusion of boughs and branches, than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a mathematical figure; and cannot but fancy that an orchard in flower looks infinitely more delightful than all the little labyrinths of the most finished parterre. But, as our great modelers of gardens have their magazines of plants to dispose of, it is very natural for them to tear up all the beautiful plantations of fruittrees, and contrive a plan that may most turn to their own profit, in taking off their evergreens, and the like movable plants, with which their shops are plentifully stocked.-0. No. 415.] THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 1712. PAPER V. ON THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION. Of architecture, as it affects the imagination. Greatness in architecture relates either to the bulk or to the manner. Greatness of bulk in the ancient oriental buildings. The ancient accounts of these buildings confirmed. 1. From the advantages for raising such works, in the first ages of the world, and in eastern climates; 2. From several of them which are still extant. Instances how greatness of manner affects the imagination. A French author's observations on this subject. Why concave and convex figures give a greatness of manner to works of architecture. Everything that pleases the imagination in architecture, is either great, beautiful, or new. Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem. Witness our cities of illustrious name, Their costly labor, and stupendous frame.-DRYDEN. HAVING already shown how the fancy is affected by the works of nature, and afterward considered in general both the works of nature and of art, how they mutually assist and complete each other in forming such scenes and prospects as are most apt to delight the mind of the beholder, I shall in this paper throw together some reflections on that particular art, which has more immediate tendency, than any other, to produce those primary pleasures of the imagination which have hitherto been the subject of this discourse. The art I mean is that of architecture, which I shall consider only with regard to the light in which the foregoing speculations have placed it, without entering into those rules and maxims which the great masters of architecture have laid down, and explained at large in numberless treatises upon that subject. Greatness in the works of architecture may be considered as relating to the bulk and body of structure, or to the manner in which it is built. As for the first, we find the ancients, especially among the eastern nations of the world, infinitely superior to the moderns. cannot find any grounds for such a suspicion; unless it be that we have no such works among us at present. There were indeed, many greater advantages for building in those times, and in that part of the world, than have been met with ever since. The earth was extremely fruitful; men lived generally on pasturage, which requires a much smaller number of hands than agriculture. There were few trades to employ the busy part of mankind, and fewer arts and sciences to give work to men of speculative tempers; and what is more than all the rest, the prince was absolute; so that, when he went to war, he put himself at the head of the whole people; as we find Semiramis leading her three millions to the field, and y overpowered by the number of her enemies. It is no wonder therefore when she was at peace, and turned her thoughts on building, that she could accomplish such great works, with such a prodigious multitude of laborers: beside that in her climate there was small interruption of frosts and winters, which make the northern workmen lie half a year idle. I might mention, too, among the benefits of the climate, what historians say of the earth, that it sweated out a bitumen, or natural kind of mortar, which is doubtless the same with that mentioned in the holy writ, as contributing to the structure of Babel; "Slime they used instead of mortar." In Egypt we still see their pyramids, which answer to the descriptions that have been made of them; and I question not but a traveler might find out some remains of the labyrinth that covered a whole province, and had a hundred temples disposed among its several quarters and divisions. The wall of China is one of these eastern pieces of magnificence, which makes a figure even in the map of the world, although an account of it would have been thought fabulous, were not the wall itself still extant. We are obliged to devotion for the noblest buildings that have adorned the several countries of the world. It is this which has set men work on temples and public places of worship, not only that they might, by the magnificence of the building invite the Deity to reside within it, but that such stupendous works might, at the same time, open the mind to vast conceptions, and fit it to converse with the divinity of the place. For everything that is majestic imprints an awfulness and reverence on the mind of the beholder, and strikes in with the natural greatness, of the soul. In the second place we are to consider greatness of manner in architecture, which has such force upon the imagination, that a small building, where it appears, shall give the mind nobler ideas than one of twenty times the bulk, where the manner is ordinary or little. Thus, perhaps a man would have been more astonished with the majestic air that appeared in one of Lysipp statues of Alexander, though no bigger than lik than he might have been with mount Athos, had it been cut into the figure of the hero, according to the proposal of Phidias, with a river in ost hand, and a city in the other. Not to mention the tower of Babel, of which an old author says, there were the foundations to be seen in his time, which looked like a spacious mountain; what could be more noble than the walls of Babylon, its hanging gardens, and its temple to Jupiter Belus, that rose a mile high by eight several stories, each story a furlong in height, and on the top of which was the Babylonian observatory? I might here, likewise, take Let any one reflect on the disposition of d notice of the huge rock that was cut into the he finds in himself at his first entrance in the figure of Semiramis, with the smaller rocks that Pantheon at Rome, and how his imaginatera lay by it in the shape of tributary kings; the pro- filled with something great and amazing ad, digious basin, or artificial lake, which took in the same time, consider how little, în propr* *. the whole Euphrates, till such time as a new he is affected with the inside of a Gothic c canal was formed for its reception, with the seve-dral, though it be five times larger than the old, ral trenches through which that river was con- which can arise from nothing else but the gresh veyed. I know there are persons who look upon some of these wonders of art as fabulous; but I Dinocrates. ness of the manner in the one, and the meanness in the other. these two perfections in every building which offers itself to his view, than of that which I have hitherto considered, I shall not trouble my readers with any reflections upon it. It is sufficient for my present purpose to observe, that there is nothing in this whole art which pleases the imagination, but as it is great, uncommon, or beautiful.-O. No. 416.] FRIDAY, JUNE 27, 1712. PAPER VI. ON THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION. The secondary pleasures of the imagination. The several I have seen an observation upon this subject in a French author, which very much pleased me. It is in Monsieur Freart's Parallel of the ancient and modern Architecture. I shall give it the reader with the same terms of art which he has made use of. "I am observing," says he, "a thing which, in my opinion, is very curious, whence it proceeds that in the same quantity of superficies, the one manner seems great and magnificent, and the other poor and trifling; the reason is fine and uncommon. I say, then, that to introduce into architecture this grandeur of manner, we ought so to proceed that the division of the principal members of the order may consist but of few parts, that they be all great, and of a bold and ample relievo, and swelling; and that the eye, beholding nothing little and mean, the imagination may be more vigorously touched and affected with the work that stands before it. For example: in a cornice, if the gola, or cymatium of the corona, the coping, the modillions or dentilli, make a noble show by their graceful projections, if we see none of that ordinary confusion which is the result of those little cavities, quarter rounds of the astragal, and I I AT first divided the pleasures of the imaginaknow not how many other intermingled particu- tion into such as arise from objects that are lars, which produce no effect in great and massy actually before our eyes, or that once entered into works, and which very unprofitably take up place our eyes, and are afterward called up into the to the prejudice of the principal member, it is most mind either barely by its own operations, or on certain that this manner will appear solemn and occasion of something without us, as statues or great; as, on the contrary, that it will have but a descriptions. We have already considered the poor and mean effect, where there is a redundancy first division, and shall therefore enter on the of those smaller ornaments, which divide and scat- other, which, for distinction sake, I have called ter the angles of the sight into such a multitude"The Secondary Pleasures of the Imagination." of rays, so pressed together that the whole will appear but a confusion." Quatenu' hoc simile est oculis, quod mente videmus. When I say the ideas we receive from statues, [descriptions, or such-like occasions, are the same that were once actually in our view, it must not be understood that we had once seen the very scribed. It is sufficient that we have seen places, persons, or actions in general, which bear a resemblance, or at least some remote analogy, with what we find represented; since it is in the power of the imagination, when it is once stocked with particular ideas, to enlarge, compound, and vary them at her own pleasure. Among all the figures in architecture, there are none that have a greater air than the concave and the convex; and we find in the ancient and mod-place, action, or person, that are carved or deern architecture, as well in the remote parts of China, as in countries nearer home, that round pillars and vaulted roofs make a great part of those buildings which are designed for pomp and magnificence. The reason I take to be, because in these figures we generally see more of the body than in those of other kinds. There are, indeed, figures of bodies, where the eye may take in two- Among the different kinds of representation, thirds of the surface; but, as in such bodies, the statuary is the most natural, and shows us somesight must split upon several angles, it does not thing likest the object that is represented. To take in one uniform idea, but several ideas of the make use of a common instance: let one who is same kind. Look upon the outside of a dome, born blind take an image in his hands, and trace your eye half surrounds it; look upon the inside, out with his fingers the different furrows and imand at one glance you have all the prospect of it; pressions of the chisel, and he will easily conthe entire concavity falls into your eye at once, ceive how the shape of a man, or beast may be the sight being at the center that collects and represented by it; but should he draw his hand gathers into it the lines of the whole circumfer- over a picture, where all is smooth and uniform, ence: in a square pillar, the sight often takes in he would never be able to imagine how the several but a fourth part of the surface; and in a square prominences and depressions of a human body concave must move up and down to the different should be shown on a plain piece of canvas, that sides, before it is master of all the inward surface. has in it no unevenness or irregularity. DescripFor this reason, the fancy is infinitely more struck tion runs yet farther from the things it represents with the view of the open air and skies, that passes through an arch, than what comes through a square, or any other figure. The figure of the rainbow does not contribute less to its magnificence than the colors to its beauty, as it is very poetically described by the son of Sirach: "Look upon the rainbow, and praise Him that made it; very beautiful is it in its brightness; it encompasses the heavens with a glorious circle, and the hands of the Most High have bended it.' Having thus spoken of that greatness which affects the mind in architecture, I might next show the pleasure that arises in the imagination from what appears new and beautiful in this art; but as every beholder has naturally a greater taste of than painting; for a picture bears a real resemblance to the original, which letters and syllables are wholly void of. Colors speak all languages, but words are understood only by such a people or nation. For this reason, though men's necessities quickly put them on finding out speech, writing is probably of a later invention than painting; particularly we are told that in America, when the Spaniards first arrived there, ex presses were sent to the Emperor of Mexico in paint, and the news of his country delineated by the strokes of a pencil, which was a more natural way than that of writing, though at the same time much more imperfect, because it is impossible to draw the little connections of speech, or to give the picture of a conjunction or an adverb acquainted with the same language, and know It would yet be more strange to represent visible the meaning of the words they read, should nev objects by sounds that have no ideas annexed to ertheless have a different relish of the same dethem, and to make something like description in scriptions. We find one transported with a pasmusic. Yet it is certain, there may be confused, sage, which another runs over with coldness and imperfect notions of this nature raised in the im- indifference; or finding the representation exagination by an artificial composition of notes; tremely natural, where another can perceive nothand we find that great masters in the art are ing of likeness and conformity. This different able, sometimes to set their hearers in the heat taste must proceed either from the perfection and hurry of a battle, to overcast their minds of imagination in one more than in another, or with melancholy scenes and apprehensions of from the different ideas that several readers affix deaths and funerals, or to lull them into pleasing to the same words. For, to have a true relish and dreams of groves and elysiums. form a right judgment of a description, a man In all these instances, this secondary pleasure should be born with a good imagination, and of the imagination proceeds from that action of must have well weighed the force and energy that the mind which compares the ideas arising from lie in the several words of a language, so as to be the original objects with the ideas we receive able to distinguish which are most significant from the statue, picture, description or sound, and expressive of their proper ideas, and what that represents them. It is impossible for us to additional strength and beauty they are capable give the necessary reason why this operation of of receiving from conjunction with others. The the mind is attended with so much pleasure, as I fancy must be warm, to retain the print of those have before observed on the same occasion; but, images it hath received from outward objects, and we find a great variety of entertainments derived the judgment discerning, to know what expressfrom this single principle; for it is this that notions are most proper to clothe and adorn them to only gives us a relish of statuary, painting, and the best advantage. A man who is deficient in description, but makes us delight in all the ac either of these respects, though he may receive tions and arts of mimicry. It is this that makes the general notion of a description, can never see the several kinds of wit pleasant, which consists, distinctly all its particular beauties; as a person as I have formerly shown, in the affinity of ideas: with a weak sight may have the confused prospect and we may add, it is this also that raises the lit-of a place that lies before him, without entering tle satisfaction we sometimes find in the different sorts of false wit; whether it consists in the affinity of letters, as an anagram, acrostic; or of syllables, as in doggerel rhymes, echoes; or of words, as in puns, quibbles; or of a whole sentence or poem, as wings and altars. The final cause, probably of annexing pleasure to this operation of the mind, was to quicken and encourage us into its several parts, or discerning the variety of its colors in their full glory and perfection.-0. No. 417.] SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 1712 PAPER VII. ON THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION. CONTENTS. in our searches after truth, since the distinguishing How a whole set of ideas hang together, etc. A natural esuse one thing from another, and the right discerning betwixt our ideas, depend wholly upon our comparing them together, and observing the congruity or disagreement that appears among the several works of nature. But I shall here confine myself to those pleasures of the imagination which proceed from ideas raised by words, because most of the observations that agree with descriptions are equally applicable to painting and statuary. assigned for it. How to perfect the imagination of a writer. Quem tu, Melpomene, semel Non illum labor Isthmius Clarabit pugilem, non equus impiger, etc. Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves. Of numbers smil'd, shall never grace The reader finds a scene drawn in stronger colors, The Isthmian gauntlet, or be seen First in the fam'd Olympic race. and painted more to the life in his imagination, But him the streams that warbling flow by the help of words, than by an actual survey Rich Tibur's fertile meads along, of the scenes which they describe. In this case, And shady groves, his haunts shall know, The master of th' Eolian song.—ATTERBURY. the poet seems to get the better of nature: he takes, indeed, the landscape after her, but gives it WE may observe, that any single circumstance more vigorous touches, heightens its beauty, and of what we have formerly seen often raises up a so enlivens the whole piece, that the images which whole scene of imagery, and awakens numberless flow from the objects themselves appear weak and ideas that before slept in the imagination; such faint, in comparison of those that come from the particular smell or color is able to fill the mind, expressions. The reason, probably, may be, be-on a sudden, with the picture of the fields or gar cause in the survey of any object, we have only dens where we first met with it, and to bring up into so much of it painted on the imagination as view all the variety of images that once attended comes in at the eye; but in its description, the poet gives us as free a view of it as he pleases, and discovers to us several parts, that either we did not attend to, or that lay out of our sight when we first beheld it. As we look on any object, our idea of it is, perhaps, made up of two or three simple ideas; but when the poet represents it, he may either give us a more complex idea of it, or only raise in us such ideas as are most apt to affect the imagination. It may be here worth our while to examine how it comes to pass that several readers, who are all it. Our imagination takes the hint, and leads us unexpectedly into cities or theaters, plains or meadows. We may further observe, when the fancy thus reflects on the scenes that have passed in it formerly, those which were at first pleasant to behold, appear more so upon reflection, and that the memory heightens the delightfulness of the original. A Cartesian would account for both these instances in the following manner: The set of ideas which we receive from such a prospect or garden, having entered the mind at the same time, have a set of traces, belonging to them in the brain, bordering very near upon one another; when, therefore, any one of these ideas arises in the imagination, and consequently dispatches a flow of animal spirits to its proper trace, these spirits, in the violence of their motion, run not only into the trace to which they were more particularly directed, but into several of those that lie about it. By this means, they awaken other ideas of the same set, which immediately determine a new dispatch of spirits, that in the same manner open other neighboring traces, till at last the whole set of them is blown up, and the whole prospect or garden flourishes in the imagination. But because the pleasure we receive from these places far surmounted, and overcame the little disagreeableness we found in them, for this reason there was at first a wider passage worn in the pleasure traces, and on the contrary, so narrow a one in those which belonged to the disagreeable ideas, that they were quickly stopped up, and rendered incapable of receiving any animal spirits, and consequently of exciting any unpleasant ideas in the memory. It would be in vain to inquire whether the power of imagining things strongly proceeds from any greater perfection in the soul, or from any nicer texture in the brain of one man than of another. But this is certain, that a noble writer should be born with this faculty in its full strength and vigor, so as to be able to receive lively ideas from outward objects, to retain them long, and to range them together upon occasion, in such figures and representations, as are most likely to hit the fancy of the reader. A poet should take as much pains in forming his imagination, as a philosopher in cultivating his understanding. He must gain a due relish of the works of nature, and be thoroughly conversant in the various scenery of a country life. When he is stored with country images, if he would go beyond pastoral, and the lower kinds of poetry, he ought to acquaint himself with the pomp and magnificence of courts. He should be very well versed in everything that is noble and stately in the productions of art, whether it appear in painting or statuary; in the great works of architecture which are in their present glory, or in the ruins of those which flourished in for mer ages. Such advantages as these help to open a man's thoughts, and to enlarge his imagination, and will therefore have their influence on all kinds of writing, if the author knows how to make right use of them. And among those of the learned languages who excel in this talent, the most perfect in their several kinds are perhaps Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. The first strikes the imagination wonderfully with what is great, the second with what is beautiful, and the last with what is strange. Reading the Iliad is like traveling through a country uninhabited, where the fancy is entertained with a thousand savage prospects of vast deserts, wide, uncultivated marshes, huge forests, misshapen rocks and precipices. On the contrary, the Eneid is like a well-ordered garden, where it is impossible to find out any part unadorned, or to cast our eyes upon a single spot that does not produce some beautiful plant or flower. But when we are in the Metamorphoses, we are walking on enchanted ground, and see nothing but scenes of magic lying around us. Homer is in his province when he is describing a battle or a multitude, a hero or a god. Virgil is never better pleased than when he is in his elys ium, or copying out an entertaining picture. Homer's epithets generally mark out what is great; Virgil's what is agreeable. Nothing can be more magnificent than the figure Jupiter makes in the first Iliad, nor more charming than that of Venus in the first Æneid. He spoke, and awful bends his sable brows, Dixit: et avertens rosea cervice refulsit Et vera incessu patuit dea.—————— -VIRG. En. i. 406. And gave his rolling eyes a sparkling grace, And breath'd a youthful vigor on his face.-DRYDEN. In a word, Homer fills his readers with sublime ideas, and I believe has raised the imagination of all the good poets that have come after him. I shall only instance Horace, who immediately takes fire at the first hint of any passage in the Iliad or Odyssey, and always rises above himself when he has Homer in his view. Virgil has drawn together into his Eneid, all the pleasing scenes his subject is capable of admitting, and, in his Georgics, has given us a collection of the most delightful landscapes that can be made out of fields and woods, herds of cattle, and swarms of bees. Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, has shown us how the imagination may be affected by what is strange. He describes a miracle in every story, and always gives us the sight of some new creature at the end of it. His art consists chiefly in well-timing his description, before the first shape is quite worn off, and the new one perfectly finished; so that he everywhere entertains us with something we never saw before, and shows us monster after mou ster to the end of the Metamorphoses. If I were to name a poet that is a perfect master in all these arts of working on the imagination, I think Milton may pass for one; and if his Paradise Lost falls short of the Eneid or Iliad in this respect, it proceeds rather from the fault of the language in which it is written, than from any defect of genius in the author. So divine a poem in English is like a stately palace built of brick, where one may see architecture in as great a perfection as one of marble, though the materials are of a coarser nature. But to consider it only as it regards our present subject; what can be conceived greater than the battle of angels, the majesty of Messiah, the stature and behavior of Satan and his peers What more beautiful than Pandæmonium, Paradise, Heaven, Angels, Adam, and Eve? What more strange than the creation of the world, the several metamorphoses of the fallen angels, and the surprising adventures their leader meets with in his search after Paradise? No other subject could have furnished a poet with scenes so proper to strike the imagination, as no other poet could have painted those scenes in more strong and lively colors.-O. No 418.] MONDAY, JUNE 30, 1712. PAPER VIII. ON THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION. CONTENTS. Why anything that is unpleasant to behold pleases the im- -Ferat et rubus asper amonum.-VIRG. Ecl. iii. 89. THE pleasures of these secondary views of the imagination are of a wider and more universal nature than those it has when joined with sight; for not only what is great, strange, or beautiful, but anything that is disagreeable when looked upon pleases us in an apt description. Here, therefore, we must inquire after a new principle of pleasure, which is nothing else but the action of the mind, which compares the ideas that arise from words with the ideas that arise from the objects them selves; and why this operation of the mind is attended with so much pleasure, we have before considered. For this reason, therefore, the description of a dunghill is pleasing to the imagination, if the image be represented to our minds by suitable expressions; though, perhaps, this may be more properly called the pleasure of the understanding than of the fancy, because we are not so much delighted with the image that is contained in the description, as with the aptness of the description to excite the image. But if the description of what is little, common, or deformed, be acceptable to the imagination, the description of what is great, surprising, or beautiful, is much more so; because here we are not only delighted with comparing the representation with the original, but are highly pleased with the original itself. Most readers, I believe, are more charmed with Milton's description of paradise, than of hell; they are both, perhaps, equally perfect in their kind; but in the one, the brimstone and sulphur are not so refreshing to the imagination, as the beds of flowers and the wilderness of sweets in the other. | uneasiness in the fear or grief which we receive from any other occasion? If we consider, therefore, the nature of this pleasure, we shall find that it does not arise so properly from the description of what is terrible, as from the reflection we make on ourselves at the time of reading it. When we look on such hideous objects, we are not a little pleased to think we are in no danger of them. We consider them, at the same time, as dreadful and harmless; so that, the more frightful appearance they make, the greater is the plea sure we receive from the sense of our own safety. In short, we look upon the terrors of a description with the same curiosity and satisfaction that we survey a dead monster. -Informe cadave Protrahitur: nequeunt expleri corda tuendo -They drag him from his den. It is for the same reason that we are delighted with | In the like manner, when we read of torments, wounds, deaths, and the like dismal accidents, our pleasure does not flow so properly from the grief which such melancholy descriptions give us, as from the secret comparison which we make between ourselves and the person who suffers. Such representations teach us to set a just value upon our own condition, and make us prize our good fortune, which exempts us from the like calamities. This is, however, such a kind of pleasure as we are not capable of receiving, when we see a person actually lying under the tortures that we meet with in a description; because, in this case, the object presses too close upon our senses, and bears so hard upon us, that it does not give us time of leisure to reflect on ourselves. Our thoughts are so intent upon the miseries of the sufferer, that we cannot turn them upon our own happiness. Whereas, on the contrary, we consider the misfortunes we read in history or poetry, either as past or as fictitious; so that the reflection upon ourselves rises in us insensibly, and overbears the sorrow we conceive for the sufferings of the afflicted. But because the mind of man requires something more perfect in matter than what it finds there, and can never meet with any sight in nature which sufficiently answers its highest ideas of pleasantness; or, in other words, because the imagination can fancy to itself things more great, strange, or beautiful, than the eye ever saw, and is still sensible of some defect in what it has seen; on this account, it is the part of a post to humor the imagination in our own notions, by mending and perfecting nature where he describes a reality, and by adding greater beauties than are put together in nature, where he describes a fiction. There is yet another circumstance which recommends a description more than all the rest; and that is, if it represents to us such objects as are apt to raise a secret ferment in the mind of the reader, and to work with violence upon his passions. For, in this case, we are at once warned and enlightened, so that the pleasure becomes more universal, and is several ways qualified to entertain us. Thus in painting, it is pleasant to look on the picture of any face where the resemblance is hit; but the pleasure increases if it be the picture of a face that is beautiful, and is still greater, if the beauty be softened with an air of melancholy or sorrow. The two leading passions which the more serious parts of poetry endeavor to stir up in us are terror and pity. And here, by the way, one would wonder how it comes to pass that such passions as are He is not obliged to attend her in the slow advery unpleasant at all other times, are very agree- vances which she makes from one season to able when excited by proper descriptions. It is not other or to observe her conduct in the successive strange that we should take delight in such pas-production of plants and flowers. He may draw sages as are apt to produce hope, joy, admiration, love, or the like emotions, in us, because they never rise in the mind without an inward pleasure which attends them. But how comes it to pass that we should take delight in being terrified or dejected by a description, when we find so much into his description all the beauties of the spring and autumn, and make the whole year contribute something to render it the more ageecable. His *Suave antibus æquora ventis, etc. |