OF

CRITICISM.

IAP. XVIII.

BEAUTY OF LANGUAGE.

Fall the fine arts, painting only and sculpture are in their nature imitative. A field laid out with taste, is not a copy or imitation of nature, but nature itself embellished. Architecture deals in originals, and copies not from nature. Sound and motion may in some measure be imitated by music; but for the most part, music, like architecture, deals in originals. Language copies not | from nature, more than music or architecture; unless where, like music, it is imitative of found or motion: in the description, for example, of particular founds, language sometimes furnisheth words, which, beside their customary power of exciting ideas, resemble by their softA 2

ness or harshness the found described; and there are words, which, by the celerity or flowness of pronunciation, have fome resemblance to the motion they fignify. This imitative power of words goes one step farther: the loftiness of fome words, makes them proper symbols of lofty ideas; a rough fubject is imitated by harsh-founding words; and words of many fyllables pronounced flow and fmooth, are naturally expressive of grief and melancholy. Words have a separate effect on the mind, abstracting from their signification and from their imitative power: they are more or less agreeable to the ear, by the fulness, sweetness, faintness, or roughness of their tones.

These are but faint beauties, being relished by those only who have more delicacy of sensation than belongs to the bulk of mankind. Language possesseth a beauty superior greatly in degree, of which we are eminently sensible, when a thought is communicated with perfpicuity and sprightlinefs. This beauty of language, arifing from its power of expreffing thought, is apt to be confounded with the beauty of the thought itself; which beauty of thought is transferred to the expreffion, and makes it appear more beautiful *. But But these beauties, if we wish to think accurately, must be diftinguished from each other: they are in reality so distinct, that we sometimes are confcious of the highest pleasure language can afford, when the fubject expressed is disagreeable; a thing that is loathsome, or a scene of horror to make one's hair stand on end, may be described in a manner so lively, as that the disagreeableness of the fubject shall not even obfcure the agreeableness of the description. The causes of the original beauty of language confidered as fignificant, which is a branch of the present subject, will be explained in their order. I shall only at present observe, that this beauty is the beauty of means fitted to an end, viz. the communication of thought: and hence it evidently appears, that of several expreffions all conveying the same thought, the most beautiful, in the sense now mentioned, is that which in the most perfect manner anfwers its end.

L

९

The several beauties of language above mentioned, being of different kinds, ought to be handled feparately. I shall begin with those beauties of language that arife from found; after which will follow the beauties of language confidered as fignificant: this order appears natural; for the found of a word is attended to,

dignity dressed in mean language. Theopompus is celebrated for the force of his diction; but erroneously: his fubject indeed has great force, but his style very little.

Defore we confider its fignification. In a third section come those singular beauties of language that are derived from a resemblance between found and fignification. The beauties of verse are handled in the last section: for though the foregoing beauties are found in verse as well as in profe, yet verse has many peculiar beauties, which for the fake of connection must be brought under one view; and versification, at any rate, is a fubject of so great importance, as to deferve a place by itself.

I

SECT. I.

Beauty of language with respect to found.

N handling this subject, the following order

appears the most natural. The founds of the different letters come first: next, these sounds as united in fyllables: third, fyllables united in words: fourth, words united in a period: and in the last place, periods united in a discourse.

With refpect to the first article, every vowel is founded with a single expiration of air from the wind-pipe, through the cavity of the mouth; and by varying this cavity, the different vowels are founded: the air in passing through cavities differing in fize, produceth various founds; fome high or sharp, fome low or flat: a small