Page:Four Dissertations - David Hume (1757).djvu/185

 imagination. When we cannot break the association, we feel a stronger desire to remove the superiority. This seems to be the reason, why travellers, tho' commonly lavish of their praises to the Chinese and Persians, take care to depreciate those neighbouring nations, which may stand upon a footing of rivalship with their native country.

6. fine arts afford us parallel instances. Should an author compose a treatise, of which one part was serious and profound, another light and humourous; every one would condemn so strange a mixture, and would blame him for the neglect of all rules of art and criticism. Yet we accuse not Prior for joining his Alma and Solomon in the same volume; tho' that amiable poet has succeeded perfectly in the gaiety of the one, as well as in the melancholy of the other. Even suppose the reader should peruse these two compositions without any interval, he would feel little or no difficulty in the change of the passions. Why? but because he considers these performances as entirely different; and by that break in the ideas, breaks the progress