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to the motion they signify. This imitative power of words goes one step farther. The loftiness of some 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 smooth, are naturally expressive of grief and melancholy. Words have a sepa rate effect on the mind, abstracting from their signification and from their imitative power. They are more or less agreeable to the ear, by the roundness, sweetness, faintness, or roughness, of their tones.

These are beauties, but not of the first rank: They are 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 confcious when a thought is communicated in a strong and lively manner. This beauty of language, arifing from its power of expreffing thought, is apt to be confounded with the beauty of the thought expressed; which beauty, by a natural transition of feeling among things intimately connected, is conGg 2

vey'd

vey'd to the expreffion, and makes it appear more beautiful *. But these beauties, if we wish to think accurately, must be carefully distinguished from each other. They are indeed so distinct, that we fometimes are confcious of the highest pleasure language can afford, when the subject expressed is disagreeable. A thing that is loathfome, or a scene of horror to make one's hair stand on end, may be described in the liveliest manner. In this cafe, the disagreeableness of the subject, doth not even obscure the agreeableness of the defcription. 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 expressions all conveying the same thought, the most beautiful, in the sense now mentioned, is that

* See chap. 2. part 1. fect. 4.

which in the most perfect manner answers its end.

The several beauties of language above mentioned, being of different kinds and diftinguishable from each other, ought to be handled separately. I thall begin with those beauties of language which 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, before we confider its fignification. In a third section come those fingular beauties of language that are derived from a resemblance betwixt sound and fignification. The beauties of verse I propose to handle in the last section. For though the foregoing beauties are found in verse as well as in prose; yet verse has many peculiar beauties, which for the fake of perfpicuity must be brought under one view. And versification, at any rate, is a fubject of fo great importance, as to deserve a place by itself.

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1

SECT. SECT.

I.

1

Beauty of language with respect to found.

↑ Propose to handle this subject in the following order, which appears the most natural. The sounds of the different letters come first. Next, these sounds as united in syllables. Third, syllables united in words. Fourth, words united in a period. And in the last place, periods united in a difcourse.

With respect to the first article, every vowel is founded by 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 size, produceth various founds, some high or sharp, some low or flat. A small cavity occafions a high found, a large cavity a low found. The five vowels accordingly, pronounced with the fame extenfion of the

wind-pipe, but with different openings of the mouth, form a regular feries of sounds, descending from high to low, in the following order, i, e, a*, o, u. Each of these sounds is agreeable to the ear. And if it be inquired which of them is the most agreeable, it is perhaps the safest side to hold, that there is no universal preference of any one before the rest. Probably those vowels which are farthest removed from the extremes, will generally be the most relished. This is all I have to remark upon the first article. For confonants being letters which of themselves have no found, have no other power but to form articulate sounds in conjunction with vowels; and every such articulate found being a syllable, confonants come naturally under the second article. To which therefore we proceed.

All confonants are pronounced with a less cavity than any of the vowels; and consequently they contribute to form a found still more sharp than the sharpest vowel pronounced fingle. Hence it follows, that

* Here the German a is understood.

every

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