[93] CHAPTER VII. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED; AND ILLUSTRATED BY THE PRACTICE OF THE LEARNED IN OTHER BRANCHES OF LITERATURE. Bur let not this subject be misconceived or misapplied. All the natural sensibilities of man may be directed to some important use: it is the constitution of nature. Hence the provinces of taste and of utility become connected; and hence, though to please may be the primary end of poetry, nothing forbids, that to be useful may not be its ultimate end *. All the imitative arts, indeed, possess this double capacity: though their first aim is to please, their highest is to improve mankind. The wisest nations have been * The mistakes of several writers on this subject (particularly Dr. Trapp) have arisen from their confounding these ideas. Vide Trapp's Prælectiones Poeticas, p. 31. Indeed, he at last is forced into our conclusion: Hoc enim discriminatur poeta a philosopho, quod, licet utriusque sit virtutem edocere, illud tamen alter faciat methodo quidem pressiori, sed et duriori, dogmata sua inculta atque aspera, magistri et doctoris more, definiendo, explicando, et præcipiendo; idem alter præstet, præcepta sua exemplis involuta, et mira voluptate temperata, tanquam aliud agens, insinuando. Vide etiam Julii Scaligeri Poetic. lib. i. cap. 1. et Rapin, Réflexions sur la Poëtique, c. 10, 11. those who have given them their full effect. Among the Greeks, all the fine arts were made subservient to the use of the state: and their legislators, statesmen, and warriors, made the same use of poetry. It would be easy to point out how these apparently so different qualities are blended in the same design, and to expose all the futility of that criticism, or philosophy, which considers them as apart, distinct in their character, and opposite in their aim. I should suppose no critics will say, that epic and dramatic poetry should not keep some moral point in view, or that it should quite lose sight of it; yet I suspect, whoever, as a poet, entertains so commendable a design as to recommend virtue, or to put vice out of countenance, without some of those agreeable qualities which all allow to belong to poetry, would resemble the painter, who expects to produce a good picture, without properly mixing bis colours; or the musician, to render all his melodies complete, and produce a sublime harmony, who has lost his boldest string. In actions and moral principles, as Hume has well shown, it is their tendency to be useful that renders them pleasing: but in matters of taste, it is their tenderncy to please, that gives the power to be useful. In poetry, that which most pleases possesses most of those qualities that belong to the beautiful and sublime. And how is it that we get the idea of beauty? by the association of ideas * * This doctrine, which was much laboured by Mr. Hartley, has been well applied by Dr. Sayers, (see his Disquisitions, &c.) that are agreeable: and our ideas of the sublime we obtain the same way. Bishop Lowth, therefore, after maintaining the doctrine which is laid down in this Essay, and quoting a passage from Lucretius to illustrate it, adds, "as Lucretius elegantly illustrates not more his own practice, than that of poetry in general *;" and he before had laid it down, and with all possible form, that poetry is principally useful, because it is agreeable; and that the writings of the poet are in the same proportion more useful than those † of a philosopher, as they are more agreeable †. Lord Bacon, great in criticism no less than in philosophy, speaks on this subject with much dignity and effect: "The use of this seigned history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points, wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more ample variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have and by Mr. Alison and Mr. Knight, in their Treatises on Taste, to this principle; and they have each, separately, overturned Mr. Burke's Theory on the Sublime and Beautiful, a juvenile work, possessing, amidst much to be admired, great errors. * Ut puerorum ætas improvida ludificetur † De Sacra Poesi Hebræorum Prælect. lect. i. not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical: because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of action not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed providence: because true history representeth actions and events more ordinary and less interchanged, therefore poetry endueth them with more rareness, and more unexpected and alternative variations; so that it appeareth that poesy serveth and conserveth to magnanimity, morality, and delectation. And, therefore, it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind to the nature of things *." I close these testimonies, full I think to the present subject, with an observation of the ingenious Mr. Twinings, a man of great authority, where the language of Aristotle is under dispute. "He (Aristotle) never loses sight of the end of poetry, which, in conformity to common sense, he held to be pleasure. He is ready to excuse not only impossibilities, but even absurdities, where that end appears to be better answered with them than it would have been without them. The critic, who suffers his philosophy to reason away his pleasure, is not much wiser than the child, who cuts open his drum to see what it is that caused the sound †." • Advancement of Learning. II.c.xiii. 1. † Essays prefixed to Mr. T's Translation of Aristotle's Poetics. But, I must repeat, though the primary end of poetry is to please, its ultimate aim should certainly be to profit; and I hope sufficient provision has already been made against the moral objection that is usually made to this doctrine, as the objection which arises to those who consider the philosophy of the passions, is fully answered by Bishop Hurd in his note on that passage in Horace's Art of Poetry, -Tune tua me infortunia lædent. He therein shows, that the more we are hurt with representations of a terrific or sorrowful sort, the more we. are pleased; and after solving the question, Whence arises this strange pleasure? he closes as follows : "The sum is, that we are not so properly delighted by the passions, as through them. They give occasion to the most pleasing movements and gratulations. The art of the poet, indeed, consists in giving pain; but nature and reflection fly to our relief; and though they do not convert our pain into joy, (for that, methinks, would be little less than a new kind of transubstantiation,) they have an equivalent effect in producing an exquisite joy out of our preceding sorrows *." These reflections on the pleasing and fictitious nature of poetry might be illustrated by examples; by those descriptions which soothe and enliven, -those flections and flights of thought, those wonderful movements, which give the charm of novelty and variety, and by the frame and constitution of our nature produce such ravish * Notes on the Art of Poetry, p. 102, 4th edit. |