PAPER V.

account our English gardens are not so en- | No. 415.] Thursday, June 26, 1712. tertaining to the fancy as those in France and Italy, where we see a large extent of ground covered over with an agreeable mixture of garden and forest, which repre sent every where an artificial rudeness much more charming than that neatness and elegancy which we meet with in those of our own country. It might indeed be of ill consequence to the public, as well as unprofitable to private persons, to alienate so much ground from pasturage and the plough, in many parts of a country that is so well peopled, and cultivated to a far greater advantage. But why may not a whole estate be thrown into a kind of garden by frequent plantations, that may turn as much to the profit as the pleasure of the owner? A marsh overgrown with willows, or a mountain shaded with oaks, are not only more beautiful but more beneficial, than when they lie bare and unadorned. Fields of corn make a pleasant prospect; and if the walks were a little taken care of that lie between them, if the natural embroidery of the meadows were helped and improved by some small additions of art, and the several rows of hedges set off by trees and flowers that the soil was capable of receiving, a man might make a pretty landscape of his own possessions.

ON THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION. Contents.-Of architecture, as it affects the imagination. Greatness in architecture relates either to the bulk or to the manner. Greatness of bulk in the ancient oriental buildings. The ancient accounts of these buildings confirmed. 1. From the advantages for raising such works, in the first ages of the world, and in eastern climates. 2. From several of them which are still extant. Instances how greatness of manner af fects the imagination. A French author's observations on this subject. Why convex and concave figures give a greatness of manner to works of architecture. Every thing that pleases the imagination in architecture, is either great, beautiful, or new. Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem. Virg. Georg. ii. 155. Witness our cities of illustrious name, Their costly labour and stupendous frame.

Dryden.

HAVING already shown how the fancy is affected by the works of nature, and afterwards considered in general both the works of nature and of art, how they mutually assist and complete each other in forming such scenes and prospects as are most apt to delight the mind of the beholder, I shall in this paper throw together some reflections on that particular art, which has a more immediate tendency, than any other, to produce those primary pleasures of the imagination which have hitherto been the subject of this discourse. The art I mean is that of architecture, which I shall consider only with regard to the light in which the foregoing speculations have placed it, without entering into those rules and maxims which the great masters of architecture have laid down, and explained at large in numberless treatises upon that subject.

Greatness, in the works of architecture, may be considered as relating to the bulk and body of the structure, or to the manner in which it is built. As for the first, we find the ancients, especially among the eastern nations of the world, infinitely superior to the moderns.

Writers, who have given us an account of China, tell us the inhabitants of that country laugh at the plantations of our Europeans, which are laid out by the rule and line; because they say, any one may place trees in equal rows and uniform figures. They chose rather to show a genius in works of this nature, and therefore always conceal the art by which they direct themselves. They have a word, it seems, in their language, by which they express the particular beauty of a plantation that thus strikes the imagination at first sight, without discovering what it is that has so agreeable an effect. Our British gardeners, on the contrary, instead of humouring nature, love to Not to mention the tower of Babel, of deviate from it as much as possible. Our which an old author says, there were the trees rise in cones, globes, and pyramids. foundations to be seen in his time, which We see the marks of the scissars upon every looked like a spacious mountain; what plant and bush. I do not know whether I could be more noble than the walls of Babyam singular in my opinion, but, for my own lon, its hanging gardens, and its temple to part, I would rather look upon a tree in all Jupiter Belus, that rose a mile high by eight its luxuriancy and diffusion of boughs and several stories, each story a furlong in branches, than when it is thus cut and trim- height, and on the top of which was the Bamed into a mathematical figure; and cannot bylonian observatory? I might here, likebut fancy that an orchard in flower looks in-wise, take notice of the huge rock that was finitely more delightful than all the little labyrinths of the most finished parterre. But, as our great modellers of gardens have their magazines of plants to dispose of, it is very natural for them to tear up all the beautiful plantations of fruit-trees, and contrive a plan that may most turn to their own profit, in taking off their ever-greens, and the like moveable plants, with which their shops are plentifully stocked.

O.

cut into the figure of Semiramis, with the smaller rocks that lay by it in the shape of tributary kings; the prodigious basin, or artificial lake, which took in the whole Euphrates, till such time as a new canal was formed for its reception, with the several trenches through which that river was conveyed. I know there are persons who look upon some of these wonders of art as fabulous: but I cannot find any ground for such a suspicion; unless it be that we have no

such works among us at present. There were indeed many greater advantages for building in those times, and in that part of the world, than have been met with ever since. The earth was extremely fruitful; men lived generally on pasturage, which requires a much smaller number of hands than agriculture. There were few trades to employ the busy part of mankind, and fewer arts and sciences to give work to men of speculative tempers; and what is more than all the rest, the prince was absolute; so that when he went to war, he put himself at the head of the whole people, as we find Semiramis leading her three millions to the field, and yet overpowered by the number of her enemies. It is no wonder, therefore, when she was at peace, and turning her thoughts on building, that she could accomplish such great works, with such a prodigious multitude of labourers; besides that, in her climate there was small interruption of frosts and winters, which make the northern workmen lie half the year idle. might mention, too, among the benefits of the climate, what historians say of the earth, that it sweated out a bitumen, or natural kind of mortar, which is doubtless the same with that mentioned in holy writ, as contributing to the structure of Babel: Slime they used instead of mortar.'

In Egypt we still see their pyramids, which answer to the descriptions that have been made of them; and I question not but a traveller might find out some remains of the labyrinth that covered a whole province, and had a hundred temples disposed among its several quarters and divisions.

The wall of China is one of these eastern pieces of magnificence, which makes a figure even in the map of the world, although an account of it would have been thought fabulous, were not the wall itself still extant.

mount Athos, had it been cut into the figure of the hero, according to the proposal of Phidias,* with a river in one hand, and a city in the other.

Let any one reflect on the disposition of mind he finds in himself at his first entrance into the Pantheon at Rome, and how the imagination is filled with something great and amazing; and, at the same time, consider how little, in proportion, he is affected with the inside of a Gothic cathedral, though it be five times larger than the other; which can arise from nothing else but the greatness of the manner in the one, and the meanness in the other.

I have seen an observation upon this subject in a French author, which very much pleased me. It is Monsieur Freart's ParalÎel of the ancient and modern Architecture. I shall give it the reader with the same terms of art which he has made use of. 1 am observing,' says he, 'a thing which, in my opinion, is very curious, whence it proIceeds, that in the same quantity of superfices, the one manner seems great and magnificent, and the other poor and trifling; the reason is fine and uncommon. I say, then, that to introduce into architecture this grandeur of manner, we ought so to proceed, that the division of the principal members of the order may consist but of few parts, that they be all great, and of a bold and ample relievo, and swelling; and that the eye, beholding nothing little and mean, the imagination may be more vigorously touched and affected with the work that stands before it. For example, in a cornice, if the gola or cymatium of the corona, the coping, the modillions, or dentelli, make a noble show by their graceful productions, if we see none of that ordinary confusion, which is the result of those little cavities, quarter rounds of the astragal, and I know not how many other intermingled particulars, which produce no effect in great and massy works, and which very unprofitably take up place to the prejudice of the principal member, it is most certain that this manner will appear solemn and great; as, on the contrary, that it will have but a poor and mean effect, where there is a redundancy of those smaller ornaments, which divide and scatter the angles of the sight into such a multitude of rays, so pressed together that the whole will appear but a confusion.'

We are obliged to devotion for the noblest buildings that have adorned the several countries of the world. It is this which has set men at work on temples and public places of worship, not only that they might, by the magnificence of the building, invite the Deity to reside within it, but that such stupendous works might, at the same time, open the mind to vast conceptions, and fit it to converse with the divinity of the place. For every thing that is majestic imprints an awfulness and reverence on the mind of the beholder, and strikes in with the natural greatness of the soul.

In the second place we are to consider greatness of manner in architecture, which has such force upon the imagination, that a small building, where it appears, shall give the mind nobler ideas than any one of twenty times the bulk, where the manner is ordinary or little. Thus, perhaps, a man would have been more astonished with the majestic air that appeared in one of Lysippus's statues of Alexander, though no bigger than the life, than he might have been with

Among all the figures of architecture, there are none that have a greater air than the concave and the convex; and we find in all the ancient and modern architecture, as well as in the remote parts of China, as in countries nearer home, that round pillars and vaulted roofs make a great part of those buildings which are designed for pomp and magnificence. The reason I take to be, because in these figures we generally see more of the body than in those of other

* Dinocrates.

r

kinds. There are, indeed, figures of bodies, where the eye may take in two-thirds of the surface; but, as in such bodies the sight must split upon several angles, it does not take in one uniform idea, but several ideas of the same kind. Look upon the outside of a dome, your eye half surrounds it; look upon the inside, and at one glance you have all the prospect of it; the entire concavity falls into your eye at once, the sight being as the centre that collects and gathers into it the lines of the whole circumference; in a square pillar, the sight often takes in but a fourth part of the surface; and in a square concave, must move up and down to the different sides, before it is master of all the inward surface. For this reason, the fancy is infinitely more struck with the view of the open air and skies, that passes through an arch, than what comes through a square, or any other figure. The figure of the rainbow does not contribute less to its magnificence than the colours to its beauty, as it is very poetically described by the son of Sirach: Look upon the rainbow, and praise him that made it; very beautiful it is in its brightness; it encompasses the heavens with a glorious circle; and the hands of the Most High have bended it.'

Having thus spoken of that greatness which affects the mind in architecture, I might next show the pleasure that rises in the imagination from what appears new and beautiful in this art! but as every beholder has naturally greater taste of these two perfections in every building which offers itself to his view, than of that which I have hitherto considered, I shall not trouble my readers with any reflections upon it. It is sufficient for my present purpose to observe, that there is nothing in this whole art which pleases the imagination, but as it is great, uncommon, or beautiful. O.

on the other, which, for distinction sake, I have called 'The Secondary Pleasures of the Imagination.' When I say the ideas we receive from statues, descriptions, or such-like occasions, are the same that were once actually in our view, it must not be understood that we had once seen the very place, action, or person, that are carved or described. It is sufficient that we have seen places, persons, or actions in general, which bear a resemblance, or at least some remote analogy, with what we find represented; since it is in the power of the imagination, when it is once stocked with particular ideas, to enlarge, compound, and vary them at her own pleasure.

Among the different kinds of representation, statuary is the most natural, and shows us something likest the object that is represented. To make use of a common instance: let one who is born blind take an image in his hands, and trace out with his fingers the different furrows and impressions of the chisel, and he will easily conceive how the shape of a man, or beast, may be represented by it; but should he draw his hand over a picture, where all is smooth and uniform, he would never be able to imagine how the several prominences and depressions of a human body could be shown on a plain piece of canvass, that has in it no unevenness or irregularity. Description runs yet farther from the things it represents than painting; for a picture bears a real resemblance to its original, which letters and syllables are wholly void of. Colours speak all languages, but words are understood only by such a people or nation. For this reason, though men's necessities quickly put them on finding out speech, writing is probably of a later invention than painting; particularly, we are told that in America, when the Spaniards first arrived there, expresses were sent to the emperor of Mexico in paint, and the news of his country delineated by the strokes of a pencil, which was a more natural way than that of writing, though at the same time much more imperfect, because it is impossible to draw the little connections of speech, or to give the picture of a conjunction or an adverb. It would be yet more strange to represent visible objects by sounds that have no ideas annexed to them, and to make something like description in music. Yet it is certain, there may be confused imperfect notions of this nature raised in the imagination by an artificial composition of notes; So far as what we see with our minds bears simili- and we find that great masters in the art tude to what we see with our eyes.

No. 416.] Friday, June 27, 1712.

PAPER VI.

ON THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION.

Contents.-The secondary pleasures of the imagination. The several sources of these pleasures (statuary, paint. ing, description, and music) compared together. The final cause of our receiving pleasure from these several sources. Of descriptions in particular. The power of words over the imagination. Why one reader is more pleased with descriptions than another. Quatenus hoc simile est oculis, quod mente videmus. Lucr. ix. 754.

are able, sometimes, to set their hearers in I AT first divided the pleasures of the the heat and hurry of a battle, to overcast imagination into such as arise from objects their minds with melancholy scenes and that are actually before our eyes, or that apprehensions of deaths and funerals, or once entered in at our eyes, and are after-to lull them into pleasing dreams of groves wards called up into the mind either barely and elysiums. by its own operations, or on occasion of something without us, as statues, or descriptions. We have already considered the first division, and shall therefore enter VOL. II.

19

In all these instances, this secondary pleasure of the imagination proceeds from that action of the mind which compares the ideas arising from the original objects

with the ideas we receive from the statue, | readers, who are all acquainted with the picture, description, or sound, that repre- same language, and know the meaning of sents them. It is impossible for us to give the words they read, should nevertheless the necessary reason why this operation of have a different relish of the same descripthe mind is attended with so much pleasure, tions. We find one transported with a pasas I have before observed on the same oc- sage, which another runs over with coldness casion; but we find a great variety of enter- and indifference; or finding the representatainments derived from this single principle; tion extremely natural, where another can for it is this that not only gives us a relish perceive nothing of likeness and conformity. of statuary, painting, and description, but This different taste must proceed either makes us delight in all the actions and arts from the perfection of imagination in one of mimickry. It is this that makes the more than in another, or from the different several kinds of wit pleasant, which con- ideas that several readers affix to the same sists, as I have formerly shown, in the words. For to have a true relish and form affinity of ideas: and we may add, it is this a right judgment of a description, a man also that raises the little satisfaction we should be born with a good imagination, sometimes find in the different sorts of false and must have well weighed the force and wit; whether it consists in the affinity of energy that lie in the several words of a letters, as an anagram, acrostic; or of syl- language, so as to be able to distinguish lables, as in doggrel rhymes, echoes; or of which are most significant and expressive words, as in puns, quibbles; or of a whole of their proper ideas, and what additional sentence or poem, as wings and altars. The strength and beauty they are capable of final cause, probably, of annexing pleasure receiving from conjunction with others. to this operation of the mind, was to quicken The fancy must be warm, to retain the and encourage us in our searches after truth, print of those images it hath received from since the distinguishing one thing from an- outward objects, and the judgment discernother, and the right discerning betwixt our ing, to know what expressions are most ideas, depend wholly upon our comparing proper to clothe and adorn them to the them together, and observing the congruity best advantage. A man who is deficient in or disagreement that appears among the either of these respects, though he may reseveral works of nature. ceive the general notion of a description, can never see distinctly all its particular beauties; as a person with a weak sight may have the confused prospect of a place that lies before him, without entering into its several parts, or discerning the variety of its colours in their full glory and perfection.

But I shall here confine myself to those pleasures of the imagination which proceed from ideas raised by words, because most of the observations that agree with descriptions are equally applicable to painting and statuary.

PAPER VII.

O.

ON THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION.

A natural cause assigned for it. How to perfect the imagination of a writer. Who among the ancient poets had this faculty in its greatest perfection. Homer excelled in imagining what is great; Virgil in imagining what is beautiful; Ovid in imagining what is new. Our own countryman, Milton, very perfect in all these three respects.

Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves. The reader finds a scene No. 417.] Saturday, June 28, 1712. drawn in stronger colours, and painted more to the life in his imagination by the help of words, than by an actual survey of the scene which they describe. In this case, Contents.-How a whole set of ideas hang together, &c. the poet seems to get the better of nature: he takes, indeed, the landscape after her, but gives it more vigorous touches, heightens its beauty, and so enlivens the whole piece, that the images which flow from the object themselves appear weak and faint, in comparison of those that come from the expressions. The reason, probably, may be, because in the survey of any object, we have only so much of it painted on the imagination as comes in at the eye: but in its description, the poet gives us as free a view of it as he pleases, and discovers to us several parts, that either we did not attend to, or that lay out of our sight when we first beheld it. As we look on any object, our idea of it is, perhaps, made up of two or three simple ideas; but when the poet represents it, he may either give us a more complex idea of it, or only raise in us such ideas as are most apt to affect the imagina

tion.

It may here be worth our while to examine how it comes to pass that several

Quem tu, Melpomene, semel
Nascentem placido lumine videris,
Illum non labor Isthmius
Clarabit pugilem, non equus impiger, &c.
Sed quæ Tibur aquæ fertile perfluent,
Et spissæ nemorum coma
Fingent Æolio carmine nobilem.

Hor. Od. iii. Lib. 4. 1.

He on whose birth the lyric queen
Of numbers smil'd, shall never grace
The Isthmian gauntlet, or be seen
First in the fame'd Olympic race.

But him the streams that warbling flow
Rich Tiber's fertile meads along,
And shady groves, his haunts, shall know
The master of th' Æolian song. Atterbury.

WE may observe, that any single circumstance of what we have formerly seen often raises up a whole scene of imagery, and awakens numberless ideas that before slept in the imagination; such a particular

THE SPECTATOR.

smell or colour is able to fill the mind, on a | the productions of art, whether it appear sudden, with the picture of the fields or in painting or statuary, in the great works gardens where we first met with it, and to of architecture, which are in their present bring up into view all the variety of images glory; or in the ruins of those which flourthat once attended it. Our imagination ished in former ages. takes the hint, and leads us unexpectedly into cities or theatres, plains or meadows. We may further observe, when the fancy thus reflects on the scenes that have passed in it formerly, those which were at first pleasant to behold appear more so upon reflection, and that the memory heightens the delightfulness of the original. A Cartesian would account for both these instances in the following manner:

When he is stored with country images, if he would go beyond pastoral, and the lower kinds of poetry, he ought to acquaint And gave his rolling eyes a sparkling grace, himself with the pomp and magnificence And breath'd a youthful vigour on his face.—Dryden. of courts. He should be very well versed In a word, Homer fills his readers with in every thing that is noble and stately in sublime ideas, and, I believe, has raised the