JOMS Swar CRITICISM. VOLUME II. A CI Harry Home & L The FIFTH EDITION. With ADDITIONS and IMPROVEMENTS. DUBLIN: Printed by CHARLES INGHAM, in OF CRITICISM. CHAP. XVIII. BEAUTY OF LANGUAGE. Ο F all the fine arts, painting only and sculpture are in their nature imitative. An ornamented field 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 mufic; 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 sounds, language sometimes furnisheth words, which, beside their customary power of exciting ideas, resemble by their softness or harshness the found described; and there are words, which, by the celerity or flowness of pronunciation, have some resemblance to the motion they fignity, 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 initated by Karth-Sounding words; and words of many fyllables pronounced low or smooth, are naturally expressive of grief and melancholy. Words have a separate effect on the mind, Abstracting from their fignification and from their imitative power: they are more or lefs agreeable to the ear, by the fulness, sweetness, faintness, or roughness of their tones. These are but faint. beauties, being known to those only who have more than ordinary acuteness of perception. Language poffefsfeth a beauty superior greatly in degree, A 2 degree, of which, we are eminently sensible when a thought is communicated with perfpicuity and sprightliness. This beauty of language, arifing from its power of expressing thought, is apt to be confounded with the beauty of the thought itself; which beauty of thought is transferred to the expreffion, and inakes it appear more beautiful*. But these beauties, if we wish to think accurately, must be distinguished from each other: they are in reality so distinct, that we sometimes are conscious of the highest pleasure language can afford, when the subject expressed is disagreeable; a thing that is loathsome, or a scene of horror to make one's hair stand on end, inay be described in a manner so lively, as that the disagreeableness of the subject shall not even obfcure the agreeableness of the description. The causes of the original beauty of language confidered as significant, which is a branch of the present subject, will be ex'plained in their order. I shall only at present observe, that this beauty is the beauty of means fitted to an end, that of communicating thought: and hence it evidently appears, that of several expressions all conveying the same thought, the most beautiful, in the sense now mentioned, is that which in the most perfect manner answers its end. The several beauties of language above mentioned, being of different kinds, ought to be handled separately. I shall begin with those beauties of language that arise from found; after which will follow the beauties of language confidered as significant: this order appears natural; for the found of a word is attended to, before we contider its fignification. In a third section come those fingulat Beauties of language that are derived from a resem * Chap. part1: fect: 5. Demetrius Phalereus (of Elocution, fec: 75) maises the fame observation. We are apt, says that author, to confound the language with the fubject; and if the latter be nervous, we judge the former to be so also. But they are clearly diftinguishable; and it is not uncommon to find subjects of great dignity dressed in mean language. Theopompus is celebrated for the force of his diction; but erroneously: his subject indeed has great force, but his style very little. |