Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/416

 342 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io» s. iv. OCT. ss, uu beautiful. To affect the mind as sublime, they must excite the idea of eternity through the material analogy. Plato does not con- template eternity in the serpent, but by means of it, and his contemplation is intel- lectual. Hence we can understand Cole- ridge's statement that the sublime suspends the operation of comparison. For this operation requires a sensible basis. In beau- tiful objects such a basis is supplied by the relative adequacy of the form to its ideal content. Thus in the wheel or the fountain, as instanced by Coleridge, it appears to be motion in rest which is more or less per- fectly expressed.* And as the beautiful object, or the object as beautiful, is constantly before the consciousness, our sense of its relative perfection coexists with pur sense of its beauty. The object as sublime, on the other hand, is lost sight of in the intellectual contemplation which it excites; and the mind, resting in pure ideas, has no stimulus to comparison. It is true that we may compare objects in respect of their adequacy as sym- bols ; but this attitude to the object cannot possibly coexist with the sense of its sublimity. From Herder's next citation from the " From this fact (viz., that we call that which is absolutely great sublime) it follows that the sub- lime is not in the things of nature, but in our ideas alone The above explanation may also be ex- pressed thus: That is sublime in comparison with which everything else appears small." Coleridge remarks upon the last sentence : " Here Kant hits layed himself open to just censure"—alluding evidently to the inadmis- sibleness of the word "comparison," in refer- ence to that which is absolutely great. But Herder's own censure is of a different kind. He refuses to banish the sublime from the sphere of nature, and his assertions provoke the following comment from Coleridge (the last of his notes):—• "Herder mistakes for the Sublime sometimes the Grand, sometimes the Majestic, sometimes the Intense, in which last sense we must render or magnificent, but as a whole (a visual whole, I mean) it cannot be sublime. A mountain in a cloudless sky, its summit smit with the sunset, is a beautiful, a magnificent object: the same with its summit hidden by clouds and seemingly blended with the sky, while mists and floating vapours " [the rest is lost]. Here the first hiatus apparently extends to a line and a half. Coleridge evidently adduces another concrete illustration, this time of an object which may bo called intense or magnificent (and perhaps also beautiful ; • Or rather unity in multeity. See his definition of Beauty in the Bristol Essay*. see below "a beautiful, a magnificent object"), but not sublime. Finally he gives an example of an object beautiful or sublime under different conditions. This instance will, in view of what he has already said, present no difficulties. The sun-smitten mountain is beautiful, in virtue of what it actually and directly presents to the senses; the cloud- capped mountain is sublime, in virtue of the idea of infinity which it suggests to the mind. At the end of this last note we may supply " encompass it, is sublime." Dorothy Wordsworth relates how Coleridge, gazing at the falls of Clyde, was delighted by the remark of a visitor which charac- terized them as majestic ; and how his delight was quickly dissipated when the- same personage added : " Yes, beautiful and sublime.' One would like to know wherein he found the peculiar appropriateness of the first epithet; and why he did not rather choose the epithet sublime, of the many which his companion lavished on the falls. For if we rightly conceive the water- fall as partly hidden in the cloud raised by its own spray, the distinction between it and the fountains at St. Peter's become* analogous to that betweeu the cloud-wrapt and unclouded mountain peak, except that in the first case the varying size enters u a factor in the varying emotional effect. Only the day before this incident at the falls, Coleridge, who " had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, <fec.." had ''discussed the subject at some length with William." But of this conversation no record has been left. J. SHAWCEOSS. TETE-A-TETE PORTRAITS IN 'THE TOWN AND COUNTRY MAGAZINE.' (See ante, p. 241.) I CONTINUE the list of identifications of these portraits:— Vol. IV. (1772). 40. P. 9, Lord H n and Mrs. L..sle - Lord Harrington and 41. P. 65, The Equestrian Hero and Mrs K. cUl - Henry, tenth Earl of Pembroke, and Mrs. Kendal. 42. P. 121, The Battersea Baron and Mrs. V _.U— Lord Bolingbroke and 43. P. 177, Lord Ironham and Mrs. G .n —Baron Irnham of Lattrelstown and 44. P. 233, Capt. H and Mrs. B y.-WiUiM) Hanger and Mra. Baddelev 45. P. 289, The Minden Hero and Mrt W .t- m,Lord. ,Geor(te Sackville and 46. P. 283", The Modern Esculapius and G...ston.-Sir William Bron ' Lady Gunston. indV •ow&t I
 * Kritik ' I translate the following :—