eralization pointed out to Newton those conceptions which led to most of his discoveries, and also gave rise to many suggestions which were not proved to be discoveries until more than a century after his death. In his experiments on light, he observed that the refracting power of different bodies was in proportion to their combustibility, and that the diamond possessed the former power in an unusual degree. Applying this law to this particular case, he was led to conceive that the diamond itself might be combustible. Though a mineral, and the hardest of known substances, he disregarded these accidents, and, boldly generalizing his idea, predicted a discovery which only a few years since has been established. 3. In the works of a great artist, there is always to be observed a manner peculiar to himself, which a true connoisseur will readily detect. We call this peculiarity the style of an author or an artist. It is derived from the intellectual and moral character of the individual, and is that which renders his outward works the index of his inward and spiritual mind. It is natural to suppose that this peculiarity should be apparent in the works of the Creator. There is a speciality in his mode of treating subjects, a style which designates all the works of his hand. He who, by deep and profound reflection on the works of God, has become most familiar with the laws of that which we call nature, and with the relations which these laws sustain to each other, will be the most likely to penetrate into the unknown, and originate those conceptions which lead to the discovery of truth. The further he advances in his investigations, the richer will be the field of discovery that opens before him. If I may be allowed, I will use an illustration which I once employed when treating on this subject. "Suppose I should present before you one of the paintings of Raphael, and, covering a part of it with a screen, ask you to proceed in both modes of expression; and we present it to the decision of taste, in any manner that will best display its form and proportions. Thus, Horace correctly remarks, "Pictoribus atque poetis, Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas." Hence a conception expressed in any one of the fine arts is readily transferred to the other. A group in painting is easily rendered in marble. Either of these also furnishes subjects for poetry, while the conceptions of Shakspeare, Milton, Scott and Bunyan, have supplied inexhaustible materials for the painter and engraver. The relation of poetic imagination to taste is easily explained. By the imagination we create pictures in the recesses of our own consciousness. By poetry, painting, sculpture, and the other fine arts, we give to our conceptions an outward manifestation. By this outward manifestation we transfer our own conceptions to the minds of other men. They, by the passive power of the imagination, form for themselves the image which we represent. Hence, the imagination in us, addresses first the imagination of others. But this is not its ultimate object. Its design is to please the taste. Unless the emotion of beauty or sublimity is awakened, we fail to accomplish our object. If we do not form an impressive manifestation of our own conception, it will fail to create a corresponding conception in other men. After the conception has been awakened, if they look upon it with disgust or indifference, our labor has been thrown away. We see, therefore, that in order to form the character of a finished artist, there must be combined great vigor of imagination, and great delicacy of taste. The author must be able instinctively to determine whether his conception is really beautiful, that is, whether it will give pleasure to the universal mind of man. When taste is deficient and the imagination vigorous, a writer or artist will abound in conceptions; but they will be puerile, nean, disgusting, unnatural or misplaced; or, what is perhaps more common, beauty and deformity will be strangely and unaccountably mingled together. In such a case, the world sometimes passes them by in silence, sometimes overwhelms them with ridicule; or, provided the follies and eccentricities are strongly marked, at first it gazes upon them with wonder, then applauds them as criginal, and then consigns them to oblivion. In the words of Horace : "Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas ARS POETICA, 1—9. It is possible, however, that the cause of the failure of an author, or of an artist, may be precisely the reverse. His taste may be too far in advance of his contemporaries. In this case they will derive no pleasure from his conceptions, be they ever so perfect, and his works will fall dead from his hand, though ever so deserving of immortality. Painters have perished from want, the least deserving of whose pictures have since commanded a price which would have rendered the artist opulent. The manuscript of Paradise Lost was sold for five pounds; while, at present, the annual profits from the sale of his work would have been a fortune to the patriot-poet. The progress of taste may thus create a demand for a work of the imagination, which did not exist in the life-time of the artist or the author. Homer is said to have begged his bread while living; although, centuries after his death, seven of the most illustrious cities contended for the honor of having been his birth-place. I have thus far treated of imagination as the power by which we form pictures at will. The object here is simple. The combinations thus formed address themselves to the taste. If they give us pleasure nothing more is demanded, and our object has been attained. If the painter execute a beautiful picture, or the sculptor a beautiful statue, we ask for nothing more. So, if the novelist or the descriptive poet present us with a succession of pleasing or exciting scenes, they may be entirely successful. More commonly, however, in writing, some other design is intermingled with this. Thus, when in earnest composition, we desire to lead the mind of the reader to a given result, some moral or intellectual idea, by the association of resemblance or contrast, suggests an event or object in nature or art to which it is analogous. We turn aside and form an image of the suggested idea. Here, however, our object is two-fold. To introduce an image merely because it was beautiful, might distract attention from the proper course of thought, and thus interfere with our principal design. Besides being beautiful, the image must illustrate and enforce the idea which suggested it. When both of these objects are accomplished, the great end of this form of imagination is attained, and to attain it is one of the most difficult achievements in literary labor. Those comparisons and metaphors which spring so spontaneously from the subject, that it appears impossible to have given utterance to the thought in any other manner, while they irradiate it with brilliant and unexpected light, have commonly been the result of intense labor, and are the product of the most exquisite artistic It may serve to illustrate this use of the imagination if we present a few examples. Moore, a writer of exuberant fancy, has occasion to allude to the fact, that the affections, by their nature, demand an object on which they may lean, and which they strive to appropriate to themselves. This idea naturally suggests the image of a vine, which can only be sustained by entwining itself around a support. This illustration, however, has been so often employed, that it has become trite. The poet looking more narrowly upon the object, observed that it clung to its support by means of a tendril. Hence he elaborates the following beautiful comparison: "The heart, like a tendril, accustomed to cling, Let it grow where it will, cannot flourish alone, But will lean to the loveliest nearest thing It can twine with itself and make closer its own." Burke visited Versailles very soon after the marriage of Marie Antoinette. Ile saw what seemed the commencement of a brilliant and happy career, herself the most remarkable object in the court which she adorned. When, in his remarks on the French revolution, he had occasion to refer to this event, her position suggested to his rich and poetic imagination the appearance of the morning star. His mind turned at once towards the beautiful image, and he says, "It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy." Thus Longinus, when he is comparing the eloquence of Demosthenes and Cicero, turns to nature for analogies |