—————— Majesty
Dies not alone, but, like a gulf, doth draw
What’s near it with it. It’s a massy wheel
Fixt on the summit of the highest mount;
To whose huge spokes, ten thousand lesser things
Are mortis’d and adjoin’d; which when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist’rous ruin.
Hamlet, act 3. sc. 8.
The poets have also made good use of the emotion produced by the elevated situation of an object.
Quod si me lyricis varibus inferes,
Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.
Horace, Carm. l. 1. ode 1.
Oh thou! the earthly author of my blood,
Whose youthful spirit, in me regenerate,
Doth with a twofold vigour lift me up,
To reach at victory above my head.
Richard II. act 1. sc. 4.
Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal
The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne.
Richard II. act 5. sc. 2.
Anthony. Why was I rais’d the meteor of the world,
Hung in the skies and blazing as I travell’d,
Till all my fires were spent; and then cast downward
To be trod out by Cæsar?
Dryden, All for love, act 1.
Though the quality of magnitude produceth a pleasant emotion, we must not conclude that the opposite quality of littleness produceth a painful emotion. It would be unhappy for man, were an object disagreeable from its being of a small size merely, when he is surrounded with so many objects of that kind. The same observation is applicable to elevation of place. A body placed high is agreeable; but the same body placed low, is not by that circumstance rendered disagreeable. Littleness, and lowness of place, are precisely similar in the following particular, that they neither give pleasure nor pain. And in this may visibly be discovered peculiar attention in fitting the internal constitution of man to his external circumstances. Were littleness, and lowness of place agreeable, greatness and elevation could not be so. Were littleness, and lowness of place disagreeable, they would occasion uninterrupted uneasiness.
The difference betwixt great and little with respect to agreeableness, is remarkably felt in a series when we pass gradually from the one extreme to the other. A mental progress from the capital to the kingdom, from that to Europe—to the whole earth—to the planetary system—to the universe, is extremely pleasant: the heart swells and the mind is dilated, at every step. The returning in an opposite direction is not positively painful, though our pleasure lessens at every step, till it vanish into indifference. Such a progress may sometimes produce a pleasure of a different sort, which arises from taking a narrower and narrower inspection. The same observation is applicable to a progress upward and downward. Ascent is pleasant because it elevates us. But descent is never painful: it is for the most part pleasant from a different cause, that it is according to the order of nature. The fall of a stone from any height, is extremely agreeable by its accelerated motion. I feel it pleasant to descend from a mountain: the descent is natural and easy. Neither is looking downward painful. On the contrary, to look down upon objects, makes part of the pleasure of elevation. Looking down becomes then only painful when the object is so far below as to create dizziness: and even when that is the case, we feel a sort of pleasure mixt with the pain. Witness Shakespear’s description of Dover cliffs:
—————— How fearful
And dizzy ’tis, to cast one’s eyes so low!
The crows and choughs, that wing the midway-air,
Shew scarce so gross as beetles. Half-way down
Hangs one, that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.
The fishermen that walk upon the beach,
Appear like mice; and yon tall anchoring bark
Diminish’d to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge,
That on th’ unnumber’d idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high. I’ll look no more,
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.
King Lear, act 4. sc. 6.
An observation is made above, that the emotions of grandeur and sublimity are nearly allied. Hence it is, that the one term is frequently put for the other. I give an example. An increasing series of numbers produceth an emotion similar to that of mounting upward, and for that reason is commonly termed an ascending series. A series of numbers gradually decreasing, produceth an emotion similar to that of going downward, and for that reason is commonly termed a descending series. We talk familiarly of going up to the capital, and of going down to the country. From a lesser kingdom we talk of going up to a greater, whence the anabasis in the Greek language when one travels from Greece to Persia. We discover the same way of speaking in the language even of Japan[55]; and its universality proves it the offspring of a natural feeling.