fure, in common with other objects, but they produce a pleasure of a fingular kind. And the power they have of producing it, is properly denominated by the name of Beauty. Whether regularity and variety have been rightly affign. ed, as the circumstances on which it depends, is a question, which in this place we need not confider. It cannot at least be denied, that we make a distinction among the objects of fight, when the things themselves are removed from our view; and that we annex the names of Beauty and Deformity to different objects and different pictures, in confequence of these perceptions. I ask then, what is meant, when the words are thus fupplied? Is it only that we are pleafed or difpleafed? This furely cannot be faid. For the epithets would then be applied with equal propriety to the objects of different senses: and the fragrance of a flower, for inftance, would be a species of beauty; the bitterness of wormwood a species of deformity.-Do we then mean that we receive pleasure and pain by means of the imagination? We may indeed mean this: but we certainly mean more than this. For the same names are used and applied, in a manner perfectly fimilar, by numbers of persons who never once thought of this artificial method of diftinguishing their ideas. There is then fome kind of perception, common to them and us,

which has occafioned this uniformity in our ways of fpeaking: and whether you will chufe to confider the perceptive faculty as refulting only from habit, or allow it the name of a Senfe of Beauty; whether these perceptions can, or cannot, be refolved into fome general principle, imagination of private advantage, or fympathy with others, are, in the prefent cafe, circumftances wholly indifferent.

If it be admitted that the epithets, of which we are speaking, were originally used in this reftrained fenfe, it is easy to fee that they would readily obtain the more extended fignification. For the fpecies of pleasure to which they were firft confined, was found always to arife from images impreffed on the fancy: what then more natural, than to apply the fame words to every fpecies of pleasure resulting from the imagination, and to every fpecies of images productive of pleasure? Thus the beauty of a human perfon might originally fignify fuch combinations of figure and colour, as produced the peculiar perception above-mentioned, Pulchritudo corporis (fays Cicero) aptâ compofitione membrorum movet oculos, et eo ipfo delectat, &c.—But from this fignification to the other the tranfition was easy and obvious. If every beautiful form gave pleafure, every pleafing form might come to be called beautiful: not becaufe the fame perceptions

4.

tions are excited by all (the pleasures being apparently different) but because they are all excited in the fame manner. And this is confirmed by a distinction which every one underftands between beauties of the regular and irregular kind. When we would diftinguish these from each other, we call the latter agreeable, and leave to the former only the name of beautiful: that is, we confine the latter term to its proper and original fenfe.-In much the fame manner objects not visible may fometimes obtain the name of beauty, for no other reafon than because the imagination is agreeably employed about them; and we may speak of a beautiful character, as well as a beautiful person: by no means intending that we have the fame feeling from the one as the other, but that in both cafes we are pleafed; and that in both the imagination contributes to the pleasure.

Now as every representative art is capable of affording us pleasure, and this pleasure is occafioned by images impreffed on the fancy; every pleafing production of art, will of course obtain the name of beautiful. Yet this hinders us not from confidering beauty as a distinct excellence in fuch productions. For we may distinguish, either in a picture or poem, between the pleafures we receive directly from the imitation of vifible forms, and those which principally depend

on

on other kinds of imitation: And we may confider vifible forms themselves either as occafions of pleasure, in common with other objects; or as yielding us that peculiar delight which they alone are capable of yielding. If we use the word beautiful in this limited fenfe, it is very intelligibly opposed to pathetic. Images of Groves, Fields, Rocks, and Water, afford us a pleasure extremely different from that which we find in the indulgence of our tender affections: nor can there be any danger of confounding the agreeable perception received from a masterly statue of an Apollo or a Venus, with that which arises from a representation of the terrors men feel under a ftorm or a plague.

It is no objection to what has been faid, that the objects we call beautiful, may also in fome cafes be occafions of paffion. The fight, for instance, of a beautiful person may give birth to the paffion of love: yet to perceive the beauty, and to feel the paffion, are two different things. For every beautiful object does not produce love in every obferver, and the fame paffion is fometimes excited by objects not beautiful; I mean not called beautiful by the perfons themselves who are affected by them. And the distinction between these feelings, would receive further confirmation (if indeed there could be any doubt of it) from obferving that people frequently speak

of beauty, and, as far as appears intelligibly, in perfons of their own fex; who feel perhaps no paffion but that of envy: which will not furely be thought the fame with the perception of beauty.

There is then no room for an objection to the text of Horace, as it ftood before Dr. B.'s emendation unless it fhould be thought an impropriety to oppose two epithets which are capable of being understood in fenfes not oppofite. But there is not the leaft ground for this imagination. For when a word of uncertain fignification is oppofed to another whofe fignification. is certain, the oppofition itself determines the fense. The word day in one of its senses includes the whole space of twenty-four hours: yet it is not furely an impropriety to oppose day to night. In like manner the words pulchra poëmata, if we were not directed by the context, might fignify good poems in general: but when the beauty of a poem is diftinguished from other excellences, this distinction will lead us to confine our idea to beautiful imagery; and we know it is agreeable to the fentiments which Horace expreffes in other places, to declare that this kind of merit is infufficient in dramatic writers, from whom we expect a pleasure of very different kind. Indeed the most exquifite painting, if it is not conftantly fubordinate to this higher end,

becomes