The same observation is applicable in some measure to works of art: in a small building, the slightest irregularity is disagreeable; but in a magnificent palace, or a large Gothic church, irregularities are less regarded: in an epic poem we pardon many negligences that would not be permitted in a sonnet or epigram. Notwithstanding such exceptions, it may be justly laid down for a rule, That in works of art, order and regularity ought to be governing principles: and hence the observation of Longinus,* “In works of art we have regard to exact proportion; in those of nature, to grandeur and magnificence.”<217>
The same reflections are in a good measure applicable to sublimity; particularly, that, like grandeur, it is a species of agreeableness; that a beautiful object placed high, appearing more agreeable than formerly, produces in the spectator a new emotion, termed the emotion of sublimity; and that the perfection of order, regularity, and proportion, is less required in objects placed high, or at a distance, than at hand.
The pleasant emotion raised by large objects, has not escaped the poets:
——— He doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs.
Julius Caesar, act 1. sc. 3.2
Cleopatra. I dreamt there was an Emp’ror Antony;
Oh such another sleep, that I might see
But such another man!
His face was as the heavens: and therein stuck
A sun and moon, which kept their course, and lighted
The little O o’ th’ earth.
His legs bestrid the ocean, his rear’d arm
Crested the world.
Antony and Cleopatra, act 5. sc. 3.3
——— Majesty
Dies not alone, but, like a gulf, doth draw
What’s near it with it. It’s a massy wheel
Fix’d on the summit of the highest mount;<218>
To whose huge spokes, ten thousand lesser things
Are mortis’d and adjoin’d; which when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist’rous ruin.
Hamlet, act 3. sc. 8.4
The poets have also made good use of the emotion produced by the elevated situation of an object:
Quod si me lyricis vatibus inseres,
Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.
Horat. Carm. l. 1. ode 1.5
Oh thou! the earthly author of my blood,
Whose youthful spirit, in me regenerate,
Doth with a two fold vigour lift me up,
To reach at victory above my head.
Richard II. act 1. sc. 4.6
Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal
The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne.
Richard II. act 5. sc. 2.7
Anthony. Why was I rais’d the meteor of the world,
Hung in the skies, and blazing as I travell’d,
Till all my fires were spent; and then cast downward
To be trod out by Caesar?
Dryden, All for love, act 1.
The description of Paradise in the fourth book<219> of Paradise lost, is a fine illustration of the impression made by elevated objects:
So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her inclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champain head
Of a steep wilderness; whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access deny’d; and over head up grew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene; and as the ranks ascend,
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verd’rous wall of Paradise up sprung;
Which to our general fire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neighb’ring round.
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue,
Appear’d, with gay enamell’d colours mix’d.
B. 4. l. 131.
Tho’ a grand object is agreeable, we must not infer that a little object is disagreeable; which would be unhappy for man, considering that he is surrounded with so many objects of that kind. The same holds with respect to place: a body placed high is agreeable; but the same body placed low, is not by that circumstance rendered dis-<220>agreeable. Littleness and lowness of place are precisely similar in the following particular, that they neither give pleasure nor pain. And in this may visibly be discovered peculiar attention in fitting the internal constitution of man to his external circumstances: were littleness and lowness of place agreeable, greatness and elevation could not be so: were littleness and lowness of place disagreeable, they would occasion perpetual uneasiness.
The difference between great and little with respect to agreeableness, is remarkably felt in a series when we pass gradually from the one extreme to the other. A mental progress from the capital to the kingdom, from that to Europe—to the whole earth—to the planetary system—to the universe, is extremely pleasant: the heart swells, and the mind is dilated, at every step. The returning in an opposite direction