Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/303

 Of Poetry.

The beauties and excellencies of good poetry are deducible from three sources. First, The harmony, regularity, and variety of the numbers or metre, and of the rhyme. Secondly, The fitness and strength of the words and phrases. Thirdly, The subject matter of the poem, and the invention and judgment exerted by the poet in regard to his subject. And the beauties arising from each of these are much transferred upon the other two by association.

That the versification has of itself a considerable influence, may be seen by putting good poetical passages into the order of prose. And it may be accounted for from what has been already observed of uniformity and variety, from the smoothness and facility with which verses run over the tongue, from the frequent coincidence of the end of the sentence, and that of the verse, at the same time that this rule is violated at proper intervals in all varieties, lest the ear should be tired with too much sameness, from the assistance which versification affords to the memory, from some faint resemblance which it bears to music, and its frequent associations with it, &c. &c.

The beauties of the diction arise chiefly from the figures; and therefore it will be necessary here to inquire into the sources of their beauties.

Now figurative words seem to strike and please us chiefly from that impropriety which appears at first sight, upon their application to the things denoted by them, and from the consequent heightening of the propriety as soon as it is duly perceived. For when figurative words have recurred so often as to excite the secondary idea instantaneously, and without any previous harshness to the imagination, they lose their peculiar beauty and force; and in order to recover this, and make ourselves sensible of it, we are obliged to recall the literal sense, and to place the literal and figurative senses close together, that so we may first be sensible of the inconsistency, and then be more affected with the union and coalescence.

Besides this, figurative expressions illuminate our discourses and writings by transferring the properties, associations, and emotions, belonging to one thing upon another, by augmenting, diminishing, &c. and thus, according as the subject is ludicrous or grave, they either increase our mirth and laughter, or excite in us love, tenderness, compassion, admiration, indignation, terror, devotion, &c.

When figures are too distant, or too obscure, when they augment or diminish too much, we are displeased; and the principal art in the use of figures is to heighten, as far as the imagination will permit, the greatest beauty lying upon the confines of what disgusts by being too remote or bombast. And this extreme limit for figurative expressions shews evidently, that the pleasure