Grand Dieu! rends-nous le jour et combati contre nous." I have spoken of actions produced by a sublime instinct. The following remarkable instance occurred in the last century. A lion escaped from the menagerie of the grand duke of Florence, and ran through the streets of the city. Terror spread through all ranks, and every one fled before him. A woman who carried an infant in her arms, let it fall, as she ran. The lion took it in his mouth. The frantic mother threw herself on her knees before the terrible animal, and demanded her child in the most heartrending accents.-This extraordinary action, which was the last effort of madness or despair; this forgetfulness of reason, or rising above reason itself;-this poignant grief which persuades itself that nothing can be inflexible to its prayers-is an instance of the true sublime. The event suggests another remark. The lion stopped; regarded her with fixed attention, gently put the infant on the ground, and passed on! May we venture to infer that grief and despair can move even wild beasts? We know that they are capable of sentiments which belong to habit, and many instances are recorded of their attachment and gratitude. In this instance, the mother, to arrest the teeth of the ferocious beast, had but one moment and a single cry. He must have comprehended what she demanded, and been moved by her prayer: he did un *This is Lamotte's translation; but he has mistaken the sense of the original, and I am surprised that La Harpe should have passed it without notice. Pope expresses it thus: If Greece must perish we thy will obey, But let us perish in the face of day! Homer does not attribute to Ajax the impiety of defying the power of Jupiter, if he will but give him light. Longinus thus represents this passage, which has been regarded as one of the most sublime in Homer: "The thickest darkness had suddenly covered the Grecian army, and hindered them from fighting: when Ajax, not knowing what course to take, cries out; Oh Jove, disperse this darkness which covers the Greeks, and if we must perish, let us perish in the light! This is a sentiment truly worthy of Ajax. He does not pray for life, which would have been unworthy of a hero: but because in that darkness he could not employ his valour to any glorious purpose, and, vexed to stand idle in the field of battle, he only prays that the day might appear, as being assured of terminating his own life, in a manner worthy of him, though Jupiter himself should oppose his efforts." derstand it, and he was moved by it. But how? This would furnish us with many religious reflexions on the natural affinity between all animated beings; but they do not belong to our subject. After what has been said of the sublime, the question naturally occurs, if it can neither be analysed nor defined, what has Longinus accomplished in his treatise? We answer that he has not treated this subject; but has confined himself to what rhetoricians denominated the sublime style, in contradistinction to the simple and the temperate style, which holds a middle rank between the two: the style which belongs to grave matters, to elevated subjects, to epic, dramatic and lyric poetry, to eloquence judicial, deliberative or demonstrative, when the subject is susceptible of grandeur, elevation, force and pathos. This will appear from an examination of the work itself. Some critics entertain a different opinion, and they have been led into the error by the fact, that there are some parts in Longinus which may be applied to the sublime of which we have spoken: but the contexture of the whole work shows that these examples are only cited at belonging to a sublime style, with which they are necessarily connected. It may be asked how such a dispute should have arisen, since the author must have commenced by determining in a precise manner what he meant to discuss. The commencement of the work will answer this question. It is necessary for you to be apprised, that before the time of Longinus, there existed a treatise on the sublime, by a rhetorician named Cecilius, which is now entirely lost, and only known to us, by being mentioned by Longinus. Longinus commences by an exordium addressed to Terentianus, his pupil and friend. "You remember, my dear Terentianus, that when we examined the treatise of Cecilius on the sublime, we thought his style too mean for the subject; that it is entirely defective in the principal branches, and that consequently it fails in the power of communicating instruction, which should be the aim of every writer. In every treatise upon an art, two objects should be proposed: 1st, that the science, which is the subject of it, should be fully explained. The 2d in order, though the first in importance, is, that the means of attaining that science should be shown. On the first, Cecilius is very diffuse, as if his readers were entirely ignorant of the subject, and on the second he is totally silent. He explains the nature of the sublime, but he forgets to inform us how it may be reached." Longinus, therefore, thinks it unnecessary that he should be very full on the nature of the sublime, particularly as he is addressing Terentianus, who is well acquainted with that subject. "But since I write to you, my friend, who are versed in every branch of polite learning, I need not undertake to prove that the sublime consists in a certain eminence or perfection of language, and that it is this quality chiefly which has immortalized the best writers." He then proves, according to the method of the philosophers and rhetoricians, that there is an art in the sublime. He indicates the vices of style which are opposed to it, and after this preface, he enters upon the subject, and lays down the principal sources of the sublime, which, according to him, are five. 1. Το περί τας νοησεις η αδρεπήβολον, or, boldness of conception and udventurous imagination. 2. Το σφοδρον και ενθασιαστικον, Or, an enthusiastic sensibility. 3. Η ποια των σχήματον πλασις, or, a certain conformation of figures. 4. Hyevvala Opacis, or, a generous character of diction. 5. Η εν αξιώματι και διαρσει συνθεσις, or, a dignified and elevated composition. Longinus draws his examples only from the best authorities; such as Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, and Demosthenes, because he is in search of models of style. If he had intended to confine himself to traits of the sublime which sometimes present themselves, even in writers of the second rank, he would have found more than one example in the tragedies of Seneca: for instance, in his Thyestes Atreus, at the moment when Thyestes holds the cup filled with the blood of his own offspring, and says to him with hellish satisfaction, Know'st thou this blood? I know my brother, is the only reply which this wretched father makes; and he could say nothing more forcible. In his other works, Seneca, who is so strongly embued with a bad taste and with genius, whose writings we must admire in some places, though we cannot comprehend them in others, even this author exhibits happy flights, and more frequently than Cicero. This writer has produced sublime passages, that is to say, passages of an elevated and sustained force; Seneca has traits of the sublime which strike like lightning: but I prefer Cicero to Seneca, because the most brilliant lightning affords but a transient pleasure. We can scarcely pretend to reduce within the limits of any art, that which is the happy birth of a fortunate moment; and yet many writers have endeavoured to define the sublime. I shall collect a few of them. "The sublime," says Despreux, "is a certain power of language, which elevates and ravishes the soul, arising from the grandeur of the thought, the magnificence of the words, or the harmony of the turn, enlivened and animated by the expressionthat is to say, from one of these qualities alone, or from the whole three united, which forms the perfect sublime." This definition, which is long enough, for a description, does not appear to be better for its length. I would not represent the sublime as a certain power of language, nor as a harmonious, lively, and animated turn of expression. How often do we meet with these beauties without finding the sublime! What is most perspicuous here, is the distinction of three kinds of sublime, borrowed from the three first articles of the division of Longinus, to wit, that arising from the thought, from the sentiment or passion, and from the figures or images. But a division is not a definition. Lamotte says, in his discourses on the ode, "the sublime is no more than the combination in one great idea, of the true and the new, expressed with elegance and precision." What applies to every thing distinguishes nothing. What is true is found every where: what is new may very often fail in reaching the sublime, and elegance is not necessarily a constituent part of it. There is nothing elegant in the passage from Genesis cited by Longinus, as an instance of the sublime; God said, let there be light, and there was light. Huet has written a long dissertation to prove that these words are not sublime; but as it is impossible to convey a more adequate idea of the creative power, Huet must permit us to follow the opinion of Longinus. A third definition or description, is that of Silvain, who wrote a treatise on the sublime, in which there are more words than ideas. "The sublime is a discourse of an extraordinary turn, which, by the noblest images and grandest sentiments, expressed in corresponding language, elevates the mind above the ordinary conceptions of greatness, and which, by carrying it to what is more elevated in nature, ravishes it and gives it a more exalted impression of its own powers." There is nothing of any value in this excepting the concluding words which are copied exactly from Longinus. I mean that part in which one of the effects of the sublime is described to be, the giving the mind a more exalted opinion of itself. This thought, which is not less beautiful than just, is almost lost in the verbiage of Silvain. The fourth definition is that of M. de Sant-Marc, a man of letters of a highly cultivated mind, who has ably commented on Boileau and Longinus, but whose taste is not always correct. "The sublime," he says, " is a short and lively expression of what passes in the greatest and most magnanimous soul." This definition, which possesses more brevity and perspicuity than the others, is not without vagueness and indistinctness; for what is the difference between great and magnanimous in this place? In one respect, he has been more successful than the others, when he represents the sublime as the highest degree of grandeur: but he falls into the same fault with Lamotte, who takes no notice of the pathetic in his definition. Two other writers, equally celebrated, though in a different way, have also treated of the sublime, Rollin and La Bruyere; but neither of them has attempted a definition. The former, in his treatise on studies, composed, principally for young persons, but which I would recommend to every age, is led, by his subject, to speak of this division of eloquence into three parts, which I have already denominated, the simple, the temperate, and the sublime. When he comes to speak of the last, he contents himself with extracting from Longinus, what appears to him most proper to mark the qualities of the sublime. As to the particular object of the treatise, he refrains from deciding upon it, though in a manner |