Difficulty Another1source of greatness is Difficulty.When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to effect it,the idea is grand.Stonehenge,neither for disposition nor ornament,has anything admirable;but those huge rude masses of stone,set on end,and piled each on other,turn the mind on the immense force necessary for such a work.Nay,the rudeness of the work increases this cause of grandeur,as it excludes the idea of art and contrivance;for dexterity produces another sort of effect,which is different enough from this.
[Footnote 1:Part IV.sect.4-6.]
XIII
Magnificence Magnificence is likewise a source of the sublime.A great profusion of things,which are splendid or valuable in themselves,is magnificent.The starry heaven,though it occurs so very frequently to our view,never fails to excite an idea of grandeur.This cannot be owing to the stars themselves,separately considered.The number is certainly the cause.The apparent disorder augments the grandeur,for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our idea of magnificence.Besides,the stars lie in such apparent confusion,as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them.This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity.In works of art,this kind of grandeur,which consists in multitude,is to be very courteously admitted;because a profusion of excellent things is not to be attained,or with too much difficulty;and because in many cases this splendid confusion would destroy all use,which should be attended to in most of the works of art with the greatest care;besides,it is to be considered,that unless you can produce an appearance of infinity by your disorder,you will have disorder only without magnificence.
There are,however,a sort of fireworks,and some other things,that in this way succeed well,and are truly grand.There are also many deions in the poets and orators,which owe their sublimity to a richness and profusion of images,in which the mind is so dazzled as to make it impossible to attend to that exact coherence and agreement of the allusions,which we should require on every other occasion.I do not now remember a more striking example of this,than the deion which is given of the king's army in the play of Henry the Fourth:
All furnished,all in arms,All plumed like ostriches that with the wind Baited like eagles having lately bathed:As full of spirit as the month of May,And gorgeous as the sun in Midsummer,Wanton as youthful goats,wild as young bulls.I saw young Harry with his beaver on Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury;And vaulted with such ease into his seat,As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus.
In that excellent book,so remarkable for the vivacity of its deions as well as the solidity and penetration of its sentences,the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach,there is a noble panegyric on the high priest Simon the son of Onias;and it is a very fine example of the point before us:
How was he honoured in the midst of the people,in his coming out of the sanctuary!He was as the morning star in the midst of a cloud,and as the moon at the full;as the sun shining upon the temple of the Most High,and as the rainbow giving light in the bright clouds:and as the flower of roses in the spring of the year,as lilies by the rivers of waters,and as the frankincense tree in summer;as fire and incense in the censer,and as a vessel of gold set with precious stones;as a fair olive tree budding forth fruit,and as a cypress which groweth up to the clouds.When he put on the robe of honour,and was clothed with the perfection of glory,when he went up to the holy altar,he made the garment of holiness honourable.He himself stood by the hearth of the altar,compassed with his brethren round about;as a young cedar in Libanus,and as palm trees compassed they him about.So were all the sons of Aaron in their glory,and the oblations of the Lord in their hands,&c.
XIV
Light Having considered extension,so far as it is capable of raising ideas of greatness;colour comes next under consideration.All colours depend on light.Light therefore ought previously to be examined;and with its opposite,darkness.With regard to light,to make it a cause capable of producing the sublime,it must be attended with some circumstances,besides its bare faculty of showing other objects.Mere light is too common a thing to make a strong impression on the mind,and without a strong impression nothing can be sublime.But such a light as that of the sun,immediately exerted on the eye,as it overpowers the sense,is a very great idea.Light of an inferior strength to this,if it moves with great celerity,has the same power;for lightning is certainly productive of grandeur,which it owes chiefly to the extreme velocity of its motion.A quick transition from light to darkness,or from darkness to light,has yet a greater effect.But darkness is more productive of sublime ideas than light.Our great poet was convinced of this;and indeed so full was he of this idea,so entirely possessed with the power of a well-managed darkness,that in describing the appearance of the Deity,amidst that profusion of magnificent images,which the grandeur of his subject provokes him to pour out upon every side,he is far from forgetting the obscurity which surrounds the most incomprehensible of all beings,but -With majesty of darkness round Circles his throne.
And what is no less remarkable,our author had the secret of preserving this idea,even when he seemed to depart the farthest from it,when he describes the light and glory which flows from the Divine presence;a light which by its very excess is converted into a species of darkness.
Dark with excessive light thy skirts appear.
Here is an idea not only poetical in a high degree,but strictly and philosophically just.Extreme light,by overcoming the organs of sight,obliterates all objects,so as in its effect exactly to resemble darkness.
