Next, the Bishop asks, ‘What is Elegance but such a turn of idiom as a fashionable fancy hath brought into repute?’
Here, again, you grow very nice in your inquiries into the idea of fancy, the idea of fashion, and I know not what of that sort. In a word, you go on defining, and distinguishing to the end of the chapter, in a way that without doubt would be very edifying to your young scholars in Trinity College, but, as levelled against the Bishop, is certainly unseasonable and out of place. For define elegance that you will, it finally resolves into something that is not of the essence of human speech, but factitious and arbitrary; as depending much on the taste, the fancy, the caprice (call it what you please) of such writers or speakers, as have obtained the popular vogue for this species of eloquence, and so had the fortune to bring the turn of idiom and expression, which they preferred and cultivated, into general repute.
‘Lastly,’ the Bishop asks, ‘What is Sublimity but the application of such images, as arbitrary or casual connexions, rather than their own native grandeur, have dignified and ennobled?’
To this question you reply by asking another, Whether sublimity doth necessarily consist in the application of images? But, first, if what is called Sublimity, generally consists in the application of images, it is abundantly sufficient to the Bishop’s purpose: Next, I presume to say, that the sublime of eloquence, or the impression which a genius makes upon us by his expression, consists necessarily and universally in the application of images, that is, of bright and vivid ideas, which is the true, that is, the received sense of the word, images, (however rhetoricians may have distinguished different kinds of them, and expressed them by different names) in all rhetorical and critical works. Lastly, I maintain that these bright and vivid ideas are rendered interesting to the reader or hearer from the influence of Association, rather than of their own native dignity and grandeur: of which I could give so many instances, that, for this reason, I will only give your own, which you lay so much stress upon, of the famous oath, by the souls of those who fought at Marathon and Platæa[149]: where the peculiar ideas of interest, glory, and veneration, associated to the image or idea of the battle of Marathon and Platæa, gave a sublime and energy to this oath of Demosthenes, by the souls of those that fought there, in the conceptions of his countrymen, which no other people could have felt from it, and of which you, Sir, with all your admiration of it, have certainly a very faint conception at this time.
I should here have dispatched this article of Sublimity, but that you will expect me to take some notice of your objection to what the Bishop observes, ‘That this species of eloquence changed its nature, with the change of clime and language; and that the same expression, which in one place had the utmost simplicity, had, in another, the utmost sublime[150]:’ An observation, which he illustrates and confirms by the various fortune of the famous passage in Genesis, God said, Let there be light, and there was light; so sublime, in the apprehension of Longinus and Boileau, and so simple, in that of Huetius and Le Clerc.
To this pertinent illustration, most ingeniously explained and enforced by the learned Prelate, you reply with much ease, “That this might well be, and even in the same place,” and then proceed to inform him of I know not what union between simplicity and sublimity; though you civilly add, “That it is a point known to every SMATTERER in criticism, that these two qualities are so far from being inconsistent with each other, that they are frequently united by a natural and inseparable union[151].”
“Simplicity and sublimity may be found together.” I think the proposition false, in your sense of it, at least. But be it true, that these qualities in expression may be found together. What then? The question is of a passage, where these qualities, in the apprehension of great critics, are found separately; the one side maintaining that it is merely simple, the other, that it is merely sublime. Simplicity is, here, plainly opposed to sublimity, and implies the absence of it: Boileau, after Longinus, affirming that the expression is, and his adversaries affirming that it is not, sublime. Can any thing shew more clearly, that the sublime of eloquent expression depends on casual associations, and not on the nature of things?
But the Bishop goes further and tells us, what the associations were that occasioned these different judgments of the passage in question. The ideas suggested in it were familiar, to the sacred writer: they were new and admirable, to the Pagan Critic. Hence the expression would be of the greatest simplicity in Moses, though it would be naturally esteemed by Longinus, infinitely sublime.
Here you cavil a little about the Effect of familiarity: but, as conscious of the weakness of this part of your answer, Not to insist, you say, upon this, How comes it then that Boileau and many other Christian readers, to whom the ideas of creation were as familiar as to Moses himself, were yet affected by the sublime of this passage? You ask, How this comes to pass? How? Why in the way, in which so many other strange things come to pass, by the influence of authority. Longinus had said, the expression of this passage was sublime. And when he had said this, the wonder is to find two men, such as Huetius and Le Clerc, who durst, after that, honestly declare their own feelings, and profess that, to them, the expression was not sublime.
But more on this head of Authority presently.