CRITICISM, RELATING TO POETRY AND THE BELLES-LETTRES. [Now first collected.-See LIFE, ch. vi. and viii.] CRITICISM, RELATING TO POETRY AND THE BELLES-LETTRES. 1.- BURKE ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL. (1) [From the Monthly Review, 1757. "A Philosophical Enquir into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.' 8vo. Dodsley.] THERE are limits prescribed to all human researches, beyond which if we attempt to explore, nothing but obscurity and conjecture lie before us, and doubts instead of knowledge must terminate the enquiry. The genius, not the judgment, of an author may appear in the too abstracted speculation; he may contribute to the amusement, but seldom to the instruction of the reader. His illustrations may perplex, but not enlighten the mind; and, like a microscope, the more he magnifies the object, he will represent it the more obscurely. (1) [This celebrated work, which Dr. Johnson considered "an example of true criticism,” and which now forms a text book in liberal education, was planned when Mr. Burke was in his twenty-second year, and finished before he had attained his twenty-fifth. Whether Goldsmith knew the author personally at this time is doubtful; that he may have been informed of his name, and remembered him as a college contemporary, is probable. See Life, ch. vi.] There is, perhaps, no investigation more difficult than that of the passions, and other affections resulting from them. The difference of opinion among all who have treated on this subject, serves to convince us of its uncertainty. Even the most eminent philosophers have sometimes taken novelty, not truth, for their conductor; and have destroyed the hypothesis of their predecessors without being able to establish their own. It often happens, indeed, that while we read the productions of such a philosopher, though we condemn the reasoner, we admire the writer. Yet still learning, taste, and perspicuity, can lay claim but to a subordinate degree of esteem, when they are employed in contradicting truth, or in the investigation of inextricable difficulties. Our author thus, with all the sagacity so abstruse a subject requires; with all the learning necessary to the illustration of his system; and with all the genius that can render disquisition pleasing; by proceeding on principles not sufficiently established, has been only agreeable when he might have been instructive. He rejects all former systems, and founds his philosophy on his own particular feelings. He has divided the whole into sections, with the contents of each prefixed; a method peculiarly necessary in works of a philosophical nature; as such divisions serve for resting places to the reader, and give him time to recollect the force of the author's reasoning. The Sublime and the Beautiful have, through inadvertency, or ignorance, been frequently confounded, and mistaken one for the other. What in its own nature is sublime, has the appellation of beauty; and what is beautiful, is often called sublime. This, as the author remarks, must necessarily cause many mistakes in those whose business it is to influence the passions; since, by being unacquainted with the difference between the sublime and the beautiful, they cannot happily succeed, unless by chance, in either. The design of the work then is, to lay down such principles as may tend to ascertain and distinguish the sublime and the beautiful in any art, and to form a sort of standard for each. The author first enquires into the affections of the sublime and beautiful, in their own nature; he then proceeds to investigate the properties of such things in nature as give rise to these affections; and lastly, he considers in what manner these properties act to produce those affections, and each correspondent emotion. All our passions have their origin in self-preservation and in society; and the ends of one or the other of these they are all calculated to answer. The passions which concern self-preservation, and which are the most powerful of all the passions, turn mostly on pain or danger. For instance, the idea of pain, sickness, and death, fill the mind with strong emotions of horror; but life and health, though they put us in a capacity of being affected with pleasure, make no such impression by the single enjoyment. When danger or pain immediately affect us, they are simply terrible, and incapable of giving any delight; but when the idea of pain or danger is excited, without our being actually in such circumstances as to be injured by it, it may be delightful, as every one's experience demonstrates. This pleasing sensation, arising from the diminution of pain, and which may be called hereafter delight, is very different from that satisfaction which we feel without any pain preceding it, which may be, in the sequel, termed positive pleasure, or simply pleasure. Delight acts by no means so strongly as positive pleasure; since no lessening, even of the severest pain, can rise to pleasure,(1) but the mind still (1) To prevent any interruption of the author's chain of reasoning, whatever remark may happen to occur to us, in the course of our epitome of his |