His inconsistency.

Such things might at first sight not quite dispose one to regret that, as he himself remarks,[[310]] “the critics who have had some tincture of philosophy” have been “few,” for certainly those who have had more tincture of philosophy than Hume himself have been far fewer. But, as is usually the case,[[311]] it is not the fault of philosophy at all. For some reason, natural disposition, or want of disposition, or even that necessity of clinging to some convention which has been remarked in Voltaire himself, evidently made Hume a mere “church-going bell”—pulled by the established vergers, and summoning the faithful to orthodox worship—in most of his literary utterances. Yet, as we have seen, he could not help turning quite a different tune at times, though he himself hardly knew it.

Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful.

At the close of Burke’s Essay[[312]] he expressly declines “to consider poetry as it regards the Sublime and Beautiful more at large”; but this “more” refers to the fact that his Fifth Part had been given to the Power of Words in exciting ideas of the kind. Most of what he says on this head is Lockian discussion of simple and compound, abstract and concrete, &c., and of the connection of words with images, as illustrated by the cases—so interesting in one instance to the English, and in the other to the whole, eighteenth century—of Blacklock the blind poet, and Saunderson the blind mathematician. There is, however, a not unacute contention[[313]] against the small critics of that and other times, that the exact analytical composition necessary in a picture is not necessary in a poetic image. But one may doubt whether this notion was not connected in his own mind with the heresy of the “streaks of the tulip.”[[314]] It serves him, however, as a safeguard against the mere “imitation” theory: and it brings (or helps to bring) him very near to a just appreciation of the marvellous power of words as words. His remarks on the grandeur of the phrase “the Angel of the Lord” are as the shadow of a great rock in the weary glare of the Aufklärung, and so are those which follow on Milton’s “universe of Death.” Nor is it a trifling thing that he should have discovered the fact that “very polished languages are generally deficient in Strength.”

In the earlier part there are interesting touches, such as that of “degrading” the style of the Æneid into that of The Pilgrim’s Progress, which, curiously enough, occurs actually in a defence of a taste for romances of chivalry[[315]] and of the sea-coast of Bohemia. Part I. sect. xv., on the effects of tragedy, is almost purely ethical. In the parts—the best of the book—which deal directly with the title subjects (Parts II. and III.), an excellent demonstration[[316]] is made of the utter absurdity of that scheme of physical proportion which we formerly laughed at:[[317]] but the application, which might seem so tempting, to similar arbitrariness in judging of literature, is not made. Still more remarkable is the scantiness of the section on “The Beautiful in Sounds”[[318]] which should have brought the writer to our proper subject. Yet we can hardly regret that he says so little of it when we read that astonishing passage[[319]] in which the great Mr Burke has “observed” the affections of the body by Love, and has come to the conclusion that “the head reclines something on one side; the eyelids are more closed than usual, and the eyes roll gently with an inclination towards the object; the mouth is a little opened and the breath drawn slowly with now and then a low sigh; the whole body is composed, and the hands fall idly to the sides”—a sketch which I have always wished to have seen carried into line by the ingenious pencil of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe.[[320]] A companion portrait of the human frame under the influence of poetic afflatus, in writer or in reader, would indeed have been funny, but scarcely profitable. In fact, the most that can be said for Burke, as for the generality of these æsthetic writers, is that the speculations recommended and encouraged could not but break up the mere ice of Neo-classic rule-judgment. They almost always go directly to the effect, the result, the event, the pleasure, the trouble, the thrill. That way perhaps lies the possibility of new error: but that way certainly lies also the escape from old.

The Scottish æsthetic-empirics: Alison.

The trinitarian succession of Scottish æsthetic-empirics—Gerard, Alison, Jeffrey—could not with propriety be omitted here, but the same propriety would be violated if great space were given to them. They connect with, or at least touch, Burke and Smith on the one hand, Kames on the other: but they are, if rather more literary than the first two, very much less so than the third. All, in degrees modified perhaps chiefly by the natural tendency to “improve upon” predecessors, are associationists: and all display (though in somewhat decreasing measure as a result of the time-spirit) that sometimes amusing but in the end rather tedious tendency to substitute for actual reasoning long chains of only plausibly connected propositions, varied by more or less ingenious substitutions of definition and equivalence, which is characteristic of the eighteenth century. Gerard, the earliest, is the least important:[[321]] and such notice of Jeffrey as is necessary will come best in connection with his other critical work. Alison, as the central and most important of the three, and as representing a prevailing party for a considerable time, may have some substantive notice here.