Where we do reign we will alone uphold,
Without th' affiftance of a mortal hand.
So tell the Pope. All reverence fet apart
To him and his ufurp'd authority.

K. Philip. Brother of England, you blaspheme in this.
K. John. Though you, and all the Kings of Christendom,
Are led fo grofsly by this meddling prieft,

Dreading the curfe that money may buy out;
And by the merit of vile gold, drofs, duft,
Purchase corrupted pardon of a man,
(Who in that fale fells pardon from himself;
Though you, and all the reft, fo grofsly led,
This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish,'.
Yet I alone, alone, do me oppose

Against the Pope, and count his friends my foes.

Act III. Scene 3.

Examples of other kinds of proprieties and improprieties in imitations have been given upon various occafions in the course of these lectures, so that it is needless to multiply them in this place.

Let any perfon but recollect his feelings when a musician stops before he has finished his tune; when a bad rhyme, or no rhyme at all, occurs in a poem compofed in generally good rhyme; or when a person, who is reading, makes an unexpected paufe, and leaves a fentence unfinished, and he will perceive the force of another instance of the association of ideas, fimilar to the effect of imitation, the obfervation of which is of confiderable use in criticism; namely, that the mind is impatient of the interruption of a chain of ideas ftrongly connected, and is pleafed to fee every

thing carried to its proper conclufion, according to the ideas previously formed of it. For this reason, a member of a sentence, unusually long, or unusually short, is heard with a sense of pain and disappointment, and any diffimilarity of style in the fame compofition offends. A fhort verfe, in the midst of a poem confifting chiefly of long ones, would difpleafe; but a fhort verfe recurring alternately with long ones, as the pentameter among hexameters; recurring at equal intervals, as the adonic verfe in the fapphic, doth not difpleafe, because it is expected; nay we should feel the want of it very difagreeably, if it were omitted.

But the fatisfaction arifing from the coincidence and agreement of things, with the ideas previously exifting in our minds, is heightened, if, in fome things, it be not perfectly complete; the diffimilarity in the one cafe forming a pleafing contraft with the fimilarity in the other. For example; though a great interruption in the order of the words that compose a sentence, by parenthesis, be disagreeable, yet a small deviation from the natural, ufual, and expected order, is agreeable; and though a line that is perfectly prose would have a moft difagreeable effect in a poem, yet we find that a little variation in the feet of our heroic verfe hath a good effect, as a trouchee for a fpondee, in the following line:

Arms and the man I fing, who forc'd by fate,-

Two

Two instruments founding in unison, please; but two founds that are chords to one another, please more. Sometimes an imperfect chord is preferred to a perfect one, and fometimes a difcord is preferred to both.

The expectation and defire of feeing every thing full and complete, according to our ideas of perfection, extends much farther than the style of compofition. It often directs our hopes and fears in the most important concerns of life, and even contrary to reafon and experience. Hence the fears that men formerly had of dying in their grand climacteric; the fear that Iphigenia's brother (according to the account that Ariftotle gives of an old play) had of being facrificed, when he found himself in the fame fituation in which he believed his fifter had been facrificed. Hence the apprehenfion of the people of London, that, as they had an earthquake on the fame day of two fucceeding months, and the fecond more violent than the firft, they fhould have a third on the fame day of the month following, more fatal than either of the former. Hence many rules that common people have with regard to the weather; as that, if it be fair or rainy on fuch a particular day, it will be fair or rainy fo much longer. And hence the fatisfaction they receive from the accomplishment of a prediction. Rather than the event fhould not anfwer to it, they would take confiderable pains

to

to bring it about. Shakespeare hath noted this weakness in Henry the Fourth.

K. Henry. Doth any name particular belong

Unto that lodging where I firft did fwoon?

Warwick. "Tis call'd Jerufalem, my noble Lord.

K. Henry. Laud be to God! even there my life must end.
It hath been prophefy'd to me, many years,

I should not die but in Jerufalem;

Which vainly I fuppofed the Holy Land.
But bear me to that chamber, there I'll lie:
In that Jerufalem fhall Henry die.

Second Part of HENRY IV. A& IV. Scene laft.

LECTURE

LECTURE XXXI.

Of CLIMAX, and the Order of Words in a Sentence.

In a world conftituted as this is, a view of a

gradual rife and improvement in things cannot fail to make an agreeable profpect. The continual obfervation of this furnishes us with a stock of pleafing ideas, which are constantly accumulating, and which are easily transferred, by association, upon every thing, either in composition, or in any other field of view, which presents a fimilar appearance. How agreeable to all perfons is the idea of the days growing longer, of fpring advancing, and of children growing up to men!

This is one, but not the only cause of the remarkably ftriking effect which a well-conducted climax hath in compofition. When a series of terms rife, by nearly-equal degrees, above one another in greatness and strength, they stand in the fairest fituation for being compared and contrafted to one another; by which means the terms mentioned last in fuch a fucceffion affect the mind much more ftrongly than if they had occurred fingly. Likewise, together with the preceding terms, they

contri