Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/304

 arising from them is nearly allied to pain; and their beauty owing to a certain kind and degree of inconsistency.

However, as the various figures used in speaking and writing have great influences over each other, alter, and are much altered, as to their relative energy, by our passions, customs, opinions, constitutions, educations, &c. there can be no fixed standard for determining what is beauty here, or what is the degree of it. Every person may find, that his taste in these things receives considerable changes in his progress through life; and may, by careful observation, trace up these changes to the associations that have caused them. And yet, since mankind have a general resemblance to each other, both in their internal make and external circumstances, there will be some general agreements about these things common to all mankind. The agreements will also become perpetually greater, as the persons under consideration are supposed to agree more in their genius, studies, external circumstances, &c. Hence may be seen, in part, the foundation of the general agreements observable in critics, concerning the beauties of poetry, as well as that of their particular disputes and differences.

It may also be proper to remark here, that the custom of introducing figures in a copious manner into poetry, together with the transpositions, ellipses, superfluities, and high-strained expressions, which the laws of the versification have forced the best poets upon in some cases, have given a sanction to certain otherwise unallowable liberties of expression, and to a moderate degree of obscurity, and even converted them into beauties. To which it may be added, that a momentary obscurity is like a discord in music properly introduced.

The pleasure which we receive from the matter of the poem, and the invention and judgment of the poet, in this respect, arises from the things themselves described or represented. It is necessary therefore, that the poet should choose such scenes as are beautiful, terrible, or otherwise strongly affecting, and such characters as excite love, pity, just indignation, &c. or rather, that he should present us with a proper mixture of all these. For, as they will all please singly, so a well-ordered succession of them will much enhance these separate pleasures, by the contrasts, analogies, and coincidences, which this may be made to introduce. In all these things the chief art is to copy nature so well, and to be so exact in all the principal circumstances relating to actions, passions, &c. i.e. to real life, that the reader may be insensibly betrayed into a half belief of the truth and reality of the scene.

Verses well pronounced affect us much more, than when they merely pass over the eye, from the imitation of the affections and passions represented, by the human voice; and still much more, when acted well, and heightened by the proper conjunction of realizing circumstances.