Hence, in one place, Burke says: “As, in the animal world, and in a good measure in the vegetable world likewise, the qualities that constitute beauty may possibly be united to things of greater dimensions [that is, littleness may be united with bigness!]; when they are so united they constitute a species something different both from the sublime and beautiful, which I have before called, Fine.”
So also he says: “Ugliness I imagine likewise to be consistent enough with an idea of the sublime. But I would by no means insinuate that ugliness of itself is a sublime idea, unless united with such qualities as excite a strong terror.”
Here, he confounds sublimity with terror, as do Blair and other writers, when they say that “exact proportion of parts, though it enters often into the beautiful, is much disregarded in the sublime.” It is a fact, that exactly in proportion as ugliness is substituted for beauty in vast objects, is sublimity taken away, until at last it is utterly lost in the terrible.
Even Blair shows that sublimity may exist without terror or pain. “The proper sensation of sublimity appears,” he observes, “to be distinguishable from the sensation of either of these, and, on several occasions, to be entirely separated from them. In many grand objects, there is no coincidence with terror at all; as in the magnificent prospect of wide-extended plains, and of the starry firmament; or in the moral dispositions and sentiments, which we view with high admiration; and in many painful and terrible objects also, it is clear, there is no sort of grandeur. The amputation of a limb, or the bite of a snake, is exceedingly terrible, but is destitute of all claim whatever to sublimity.”
Payne Knight shows that terror is even opposed to sublimity: “All the great and terrible convulsions of nature; such as storms, tempests, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, &c., excite sublime ideas, and impress sublime sentiments by the prodigious exertions of energy and power which they seem to display: for though these objects are, in their nature, terrible, and generally known to be so, it is not this attribute of terror that contributes, in the smallest degree to render them sublime.... Timid women fly to a cellar, or a darkened room, to avoid the sublime effects of a thunder-storm; because to them they are not sublime, but terrible. To those only are they sublime, ‘qui formidine nulla imbuti spectant,’ who behold them without any fear at all; and to whom, therefore, they are in no degree terrible.”
This farther confirms the distinction which I made of beauty into minor or subordinate, and grand or sublime beauty, although Knight adopted other principles, if principles they may be called, and neglected such distinction.
There is but one other error on this subject which I need to notice. Burke says: “To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes. Every one will be sensible of this, who considers how greatly night adds to our dread, in all cases of danger.... Those despotic governments which are founded on the passions of men, and principally upon the passion of fear, keep their chief as much as may be from the public eye. The policy has been the same in many cases of religion. Almost all the heathen temples were dark.”
From what has already been said, it is evident that all this contributes to terror, not to sublimity; and that the same error is made by Blair when he says, “As obscurity, so disorder, too, is very compatible with grandeur, nay, frequently heightens it.”
To expose the weakness and to destroy the authority of some writers on this subject, can only set the mind free for the investigation of truth. I may, therefore, conclude this chapter by quoting the shrewd remarks of Knight on some of the principles of Burke. I shall afterward be forced critically to examine the notions of Knight in their turn.
Burke states that the highest degree of sublime sensation is astonishment; and the subordinate degrees, awe, reverence, and respect; all which he considers as modes of terror. And Knight observes that this graduated scale of the sublime, from respect to astonishment, cannot, perhaps be better illustrated than by applying it to his own character.