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with mere speculative truth or falsehood. It is not in abstract propositions or theoreins, but in actions and passions, good and evil, beauty and deformity, that we find materials for it; and all these terms are relative, implying approbation or blame. To ask, then, whether ridicule be a test of truth is, in other words, to ask whether that which is ridiculous can be morally true, can be just and becoming; or whether that which is just and becoming can be ridiculous. A question that does not deserve a serious answer. For it is most evident, that, as in a metaphysical proposition offered to the understanding for its assent, the faculty of reason examines the terms of the proposition, and finding one idea, which was supposed equal to another, to be in fact unequal, of consequence rejects the proposition as a falsehood; so, in objects offered to the mind for its esteem or applause, the faculty of ridicule, finding an incongruity in the claim, urges the mind to reject it with laughter and contempt. When, therefore, we observe such a claim obtruded upon mankind, and the inconsistent circumstances carefully concealed from the eye of the public, it is our business, if the matter be of importance to society, to drag out those latent circumstances, and, by setting them in full view, to convince the world how ridiculous the claim is: and thus a double advantage is gained; for we both detect the moral falsehood sooner than in the way of speculative inquiry, and impress the minds of men with a stronger sense of the vanity and error of its authors. And this, and no more, is meant by the application of ridicule.

But it is said, the practice is dangerous, and may be inconsistent with the regard we owe to objects of real diguity and excellence. I answer, the practice fairly managed can never be dangerous: men may be dishonest in obtruding circumstances foreign to the object, and we may be inadvertent in allowing those circumstances to impose upon us; but the sense of ridicule always judges right. The Socrates of Aristophanes is as truly ridiculous a character as ever was drawn: true; but it is not the character of Socrates, the divine moralist, and father of ancient wisdom. What then? did the ridicule of the poet hinder the philosopher from detecting and disclaiming those foreign circumstances which he had falsely introduced into his character, and thus rendered the satirist doubly ridiculous in his turn? No; but it nevertheless had an ill influence on the minds of the people. And so has the reasoning of Spinoza made many atheists: he has founded it, indeed, on suppositions utterly false; but allow him these, and his conolusions are unavoidably true. And if we must reject the use of ridicule, because, by the imposition of false circumstances, things may be made to seem ridiculous which are not so in themselves; why we ought not in the same manner to reject the use of reason, because, by proceeding on false principles, conclusions will appear true which are impossible in nature.

let the vehement and obstinate declaimers against ridicule

determine.

Ver. 285. The inexpressive semblance, &c.] This similitude is the foundation of almost all the ornaments of poetic diction.

Ver. 326. Two faithful needles, &c.] See the elegant poem recited by Cardinal Bembo in the character of Lucretius; Strada Prolus. vi. Academ. 2, c. v.

Ver. 348. By these mysterious ties, &c.] The act of remem bering seems almost wholly to depend on the association of ideas.

Ver. 411. Into its proper vehicle, &c.] This relates to the different sorts of corporeal mediums, by which the ideas of the artists are rendered palpable to the senses; as by sounds in music, by lines and shadows in painting, by diction in poetry, &c.

Ver. 547.

this book.

One pursues

The vast alone, &c.] See the note to ver. 18 of

Ver. 558. Waller longs, &c.]

O! how I long my careless limbs to lay

And again,

Under the plantane shade; and all the day

With amorous airs my fancy entertain, &c.

WALLER, Battle of the Summer Islands, Canto I.

While in the park I sing, the list ning deer
Attend my passion, and forget to fear, &c.

At Pens-hurst.

Ver. 593. Not a breeze, &c.] That this account may not appear rather poetically extravagant than just in philosophy, it may be proper to produce the sentiment of one of the greatest, wisest, and best of men on this head; one so little to be suspected of partiality in the case, that he reckons it among those favours for which he was especially thankful to the gods, that they had not suffered him to make any great proficiency in the arts of eloquence and poetry, lest by that means he should have been diverted froin pursuits of more importance to his high station. Speaking of the beauty of universal nature, he observes, that there is a pleasing and graceful aspect in every object we perceive," when once we consider its connection with that general order. He instances in many things which at first sight would be thought rather deformities; and then adds, "that a man who enjoys a sensibility of temper, with a just comprehension of the universal order, will discern many amiable things, not credible to every mind, but to those alone who have entered into an honourable familiarity with nature and her works."— M. Antonin. iii. 2.

THE

PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION.

A POEM.

GENERAL ARGUMENT.

THE pleasures of the imagination proceed either from natural objects, as from a flourishing grove, a clear and murmuring fountain, a calm sea by moonlight; or from works of art, such as a noble edifice, a musical tune, a statue, a picture, a poem. In treating of these pleasures, we must begin with the former class, they being original to the other; and nothing more being necessary, in order to explain them, than a view of our natural inclination toward greatness and beauty, and of those appearances, in the world around us, to which that inclination is adapted. This is the subject of the first book of the following poem.

But the pleasures which we receive from the elegant arts, from music, sculpture, painting, and poetry, are much more various and complicated. In them (besides greatness and beauty, or forms proper to the imagination) we find interwoven frequent representations of truth, of virtue and vice, of circumstances proper to move us with laughter, or to excite in us pity, fear, and the other passions. These moral and intellectual objects are described in the second book, to which the third properly belongs as an episode, though too large to have been included in it.

With the above mentioned causes of pleasure, which are universal in the course of human life, and appertain to our higher faculties, many others do generally occur, more limited in their operation, or of an inferior origin: such are the novelty of objects, the association of ideas, affections of the bodily senses, influences of education, national habits, and the like. To illustrate these, and from the whole to determine the character of a perfect taste, is the argument of the fourth book.

Hitherto the pleasures of the imagination belong to the human species in general. But there are certain particular men, whose imagination is endowed with powers, and susceptible of pleasures, which the generality of mankind never participate. These are the men of genius, destined by nature to excel in one or other of the arts already mentioned. It is proposed, therefore, in the last place, to delineate that genius which in some degree appears common to them all; yet with a more peculiar consideration of poetry, inasmuch as poetry is the most extensive of those arts, the most philosophical, and the most useful.

BOOK I. 1757.

ARGUMENT.

THE subject proposed. Dedication. The ideas of the Supreme Being the exemplars of all things. The variety of constitution in the minds of men, with its final cause. The general character of a tine imagination. All the immediate pleasures of the human imagination proceed either from Greatness or Beauty in external objects. The pleasure from Greatness, with its final cause. The natural connection of Beauty with truth and good. The different orders of Beauty in different objects. The infinite and all-comprehending form of Beauty, which belongs to the Divine Mind. The partial and artificial forms of Beauty, which belong to inferior intellectual beings. The origin and general conduct of beauty in man. The subordination of local beauties to the beauty of the Universe. Conclusion.

WITH what enchantment Nature's goodly scene
Attracts the sense of mortals; how the mind
For its own eye doth objects nobler still
Prepare; how men by various lessons learn
To judge of Beauty's praise; what raptures fill
The breast with fancy's native arts endow'd,
And what true culture guides it to renown;
My verse unfolds. Ye gods, or godlike powers,
Ye guardians of the sacred task, attend
Propitious. Hand in hand around your bard
Move in majestic measures, leading on

10

* Truth is here taken, not in a logical, but in a mixed and popular sense, or for what has been called the truth of things; denoting as well their natural and regular condition, as a proper estimate or judgment concerning them.

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