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verbs, so every verb requires its subject, wherewith it may agree; excepting, perhaps, in some figurative expressions.

SENTICOSE (from sentis, a briar or bramble), the name of the thirty-fifth order in Linnæus's fragments of a natural method, consisting of rose, bramble, and other plants, which resemble them in port and external structure. See BOTANY, Index.

SENTIENT, adj. Lat. sentiens. Perceiving; having perception.

This acting of the sentient phantasy is performed by a presence of sense, as the horse is under the sense of hunger, and that, without any formal syllogism, presseth him to eat.

Hale.

If the sentient be carried, passibus æquis, with the body whose motion it would observe, supposing it

regular, the remove is insensible.

Glanville's Scepsis.

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SENTIMENT, according to lord Kames, is a term appropriated to such thoughts as are prompted by passion. It differs from a perception; for a perception signifies the act by which we become conscious of external objects. It differs from consciousness of an internal action, such as thinking, suspending thought, inclining, resolving, willing, &c. And it differs from the conception of a relation among objects; a conception of that kind being termed opinion.

SENTIMENTS, in poetry. To talk in the language of music, each person has a certain tone, to which every sentiment proceeding from it ought to be tuned with the greatest accuracy: which is no easy work, especially where such harmony ought to be supported during the course of a long theatrical representation. To reach such delicacy of execution, it is necessary that a writer assume the precise character and passion of the personage represented; which requires an uncommon genius. But it is the only difficulty; for the writer, who, annihilating himself, can thus become another person, need be in no pain about the sentiments that belong to the assumed character: these will flow without study, or even preconception; and will fre

quently be as delightfully new to himself as to his reader. But if a lively picture even of a single emotion require an effort of genius, how much greater the effort to compose a passionate dialogue with as many different tones of passion as there are speakers! With what ductility of feeling must that writer be endued, who approaches perfection in such a work; when it is necessary to assume different and even opposite characters and passions in the quickest succession! Yet this work, difficult as it is, yields to that of composing a dialogue in genteel comedy, exhibiting characters without passion. The reason is, that the different tones of character are more delicate, and less in sight, than those of passion; and, accordingly, many writers, who have no genius for drawing characters, make a shift to represent, tolerably well, an ordinary passion in its what is truly the most difficult is a characteristical simple movements. But of all works of this kind, dialogue upon any philosophical or philological subject; to interweave characters with reasoning, by suiting to the character of each speaker a peculiarity not only of thought but of expression, requires the perfection of genius, taste, and judgment. A deficiency in this leads a writer to convert himself into a spectator, so as to figure, in some obscure manner, an action as passing in his sight and hearing. In that figured situation, being led to write like a spectator, he entertains his readers with his own reflections, with cool description, and florid declamation; instead of making them eye-witnesses, as it were, to a real event, and to every movement of genuine passion. Thus most of our plays appear to be cast in the same mould; personages without character, the mere outlines of passion, a tiresome monotony, and a pompous declamatory style. Unhappy is the player of genius who acts a part in what may be termed a descriptive tragedy; after assuming the very passion that is to be represented, how he is cramped in action, when he must utter, not the sentiments of the passion he feels, but a cold description in the language of a by-stander! It is that imperfection, undoubtedly, in the bulk of our plays, which confines our stage almost entirely to Shakspeare, notwithstanding his many irregularities. In our late English tragedies, we sometimes find sentiments tolerably well adapted to a plain passion: but we must not in any of them expect a sentiment expressive of character; and, upon that very account, our late performances of the dramatic kind are for the most part intolerably insipid. But it is proper to illustrate this subject by examples. The first examples shall be of sentiments that appear the legitimate offspring of passion; to which shall be opposed what are descriptive only, and illegitimate; and, in making this comparison, the instances shall be borrowed from Shakspeare and Corneille, who for genius in dramatic composition stand uppermest in the rolls of fame. I. Shakespeare shall furnish the first example, being of sentiments dictated by a violent and perturbed pas sion :

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To shut me out!
-Pour on, I will endure.
In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!
Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all-
O! that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.-

Act 3, sc. 3, With regard to the French author, truth obliges us to acknowledge that he describes in the style of a spectator, instead of expressing passion like one who feels it; which naturally betrays him into a pompous declamatory style. It is scarcely necessary to give examples, for he never varies from that tone. We shall, however, take two passages at a venture, to be confronted with the above. In the tragedy of Cinna, after the conspiracy was discovered, Emilia, having nothing in view but racks and death to herself and her lover, receives a pardon from Augustus, attended with the brightest circumstances of magnanimity and tenderness. This is a lucky situation for representing the passions of surprise and gratitude in their different stages, which seem naturally to be what follow. These passions, raised at once to the utmost pitch, and being at first too big for utterance, must, for some moments, be expressed by violent gestures only; so soon as there is vent for words, the first expressions are broken and interrupted: at last, we ought to expect a tide of intermingled sentiments, occasioned by the fluctuation of the mind between the two different passions. Emilia is made to behave in a very different manner: with extreme coolness she describes her own situation, as if she were merely a spectator; or rather the poet takes the task off her hands :

Et je me rends, Seigneur, à ces hautes bontés; Je recouvre la vûe auprès de leurs clartés. Je connois mon forfait qui me sembloit justice; Et ce que n'avoit pû la terreur du supplice, Je sens naitre en mon ame un repentir puissant, Et mon cœur en secret me dit, qu'il y consent, &c. Act 5, sc. 3. So much in general upon the genuine sentiments of passion. We proceed to particular observations. And, first, passions seldom continue uniform any considerable time; they generally fluctuate, swelling and subsiding by turns, often in a quick succession; and the sentiments cannot be just unless they correspond to such fluctuation. Accordingly, a climax never shows better than in expressing a swelling passion; the following passage may suffice for an illustration:-

I would not be the villain that thou think'st
For the whole space that's in the tyrant's grasp,
And the rich earth to boot. Macbeth, act 4, sc. 4.
The following passage expresses finely the pro-
gress of conviction:-

Let me not stir nor breathe, lest I dissolve
That tender, lovely form, of painted air,
So like Almeria. Ha! it sinks, it falls;
I'll catch it ere it goes, and grasp her shade.
'Tis life! 'tis warm! 'tis she! 'tis she herself!
It is Almeria! 'tis, it is my wife!

Mourning Bride, act 2, sc. 6. In the progress of thought, our resolutions be come more vigorous as well as our passions:— If ever I do yield or give consent,

By any action, word, or thought, to wed
Another lord, may then just heav'n shower down,
Mourning Bride, act 1, sc. 1.

&c.

This leads to a second observation, That the different stages of a passion, and its different directions, from birth to extinction, must be carefully represented in their order, because otherwise the sentiments, by being misplaced, will appear forced and unnatural. Resentment, for example, when provoked by an atrocious injury, discharges itself first upon the author; sentiments therefore of revenge come always first, and must in some measure be exhausted before the person injured think of grieving for himself. See examples of this in the Cid of Corneille, act 1, sc. 7; the Aminta of Tasso, act 4, sc. 2, and the tragedy of Jane Shore, act 3, sc. 1. 3. A person sometimes is agitated at once by different passions; and the mind in that case, vibrating like a pendulum, vents itself in sentiments that partake of the same vibration.

Queen. Would I had never trod this English earth,

Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it!
Ye've angel's faces, but heav'n knows your hearts.
What shall become of me now? wretched lady!
I am the most unhappy woman living.
Alas! poor wenches, where are now your fortunes?
Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity,
[To her woman.
No friends, no hope, no kindred weep for me!

Almost no grave allowed me.

Henry VIII., act 3, sc. I. Emilia. Oh my good lord, I would speak a word with you.

Othello.

dead.

Yes, 'tis Emilia-By and by.-She's

"Tis like she comes to speak of Cassio's death;
The noise was high---Ha! no more moving?
Still as the grave. Shall she come in? wer't good?
I think she stirs again-No-what's the best?
If she come in, she'll sure speak to my wife:
My wife! my wife! what wife? I have no wife;
Oh insupportable! oh heavy hour?

Othello, act 5, sc. 7, 4. A fourth observation is, That nature, which gave us passions, and made them extremely beneficial when moderate, intended undoubtedly that they should be subjected to the government of reason and conscience. It is therefore against the order of nature that passion in any case should take the lead in contradiction to reason and conscience: such a state of mind is a sort of anarchy which every one is ashamed of and endeavours to hide or dissemble. Even love, however laudable, is attended with a conscious shame when it becomes immoderate; it is covered from the world, and disclosed only to the beloved object :

Et que l'amour souvent de remors combattu Paroisse une foiblesse, et non une vertu.

Boileau, l'Art Poet, chant. 3, 1. 101. O, they love least that let men know they love. Two Gentlemen of Verona, act 1, sc. 3. Hence a capital rule in the representation of immoderate passions, that they ought to be hrd or dissembled as much as possible. And this holds in a special manner with respect to criminal pas

sions: one never counsels the commission of a crime in plain terms; guilt must not appear in its native colors, even in thought; the proposal must be made by hints, and by representing the action in some favorable light. Of the propriety

of sentiment upon such an occasion, Shakspeare, in the Tempest, has given us a beautiful example, in a speech by the usurping duke of Milan, ad. vising Sebastian to murder his brother the king of Naples :

Antonio.

-What might, Worthy Sebastian,-O, what might,—no more. And yet, methinks I see it in thy face

What thou should'st be: the occasion speaks thee,
and

My strong imagination sees a crown
Dropping upon thy head.

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In the same play, Almeria seeing a dead body, which she took to be Alphonso's, expresses sentiments strained and artificial, which nature suggests not to any person upon such an occasion.

See act 5, sc. 11. 5. Fanciful or finical sentiments. Sentiments that degenerate into point or conceit, however they may amuse in an idle hour, can never be the offspring of any serious or important passion. In the Jerusalem of Tasso, Tancred, after a sin

Act 2, sc. 2. A picture of this kind, perhaps still finer, is exhibited in king John, where that tyrant solicits (act 3, sc. 5.) Hubert to murder the young prince Arthur; but it is too long to be inserted here. II. As things are best illustrated by their contraries, we proceed to faulty sentiments, of which we shall quote examples from the most approved authors. The first class contains faulty sentiments of various kinds, which we shall endeavour to distin-gle combat, spent with fatigue and loss of blood, guish from each other. 1. Of sentiments that are faulty by being above the tone of the passion, the following is an example :

Othello.

-O my soul's joy!
If after every tempest comes such calms,
May the winds blow till they have waken'd death;
And let the laboring bark climb hills of seas
Olympus high, and duck again as low
As hell's from heaven!

Othello, act 2, sc. 6.

This sentiment may be suggested by violent and inflamed passion, but is not suited to the satisfaction, however great, that one feels upon escaping danger. 2. Instance of sentiments below the tone of the passion. Ptolemy, by putting Pompey to death, having incurred the displeasure of Cæsar, was in the utmost dread of being dethroned in that agitating situation, Corneille makes him utter a speech full of cool reflection, that is in no degree expressive of the passion. See La Mort de Pompé, act 4, sc. 1. 3. Sentiments that agree not with the tone of the passion; as where a pleasant sentiment is grafted upon a painful passion, or the contrary. In the following instances the sentiments are too gay for a serious passion:—

No happier task these faded eyes pursue; To read and weep is all they now can do.

Eloisa to Abelard, 1. 47.

4. Sentiments too artificial for a serious passion. The first example is a speech of Percy expiring:

O, Harry, thou hast robb'd me of my growth: I better brook the loss of brittle life,

Than those proud titles thou hast won of me;
They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my
flesh.

But thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool;
And time, that takes survey of all the world
Must have a stop.

First Part, Henry IV., act 5, sc. 9. The sentiments of the Mourning Bride are for the most part no less delicate than just copies of nature. In the following exception the picture is beautiful, but too artful to be suggested by severe grief :

Almeria. O no Time gives increase to my afflictions.

The circling hours, that gather all the woes

stood to be dead, he is discovered by Erminia, falls into a swoon; in which situation, underwho was in love with him to distraction. A more happy situation cannot be imagined to raise grief in an instant to the highest pitch; and yet, in venting her sorrow, she descend's most abominably into antithesis and conceit even of the lowest kind. See Canto 19, st. 105.

Armida's lamentation respecting her lover Hinaldo is in the same vicious style. See Canto 20, st. 124, 125, 126.

I am not barren to bring forth complaints;
Queen. Give me no help in lamentation;
All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes,
That I, being governed by the wat'ry moon,
May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world,
Ah for my husband, for my dear lord Edward.

King Richard III. act 2, sc. 2. Jane Shore utters her last breath in a witty conceit:

Then all is well, and I shall sleep in peace-
'Tis very dark, and I have lost you now
Was there not something I would have bequeath'd'
you?

But I have nothing left me to bestow,
Nothing but one sad sigh. Oh mercy, Heav'n!
[Dies.
Act 5.

Corneille, in his Examen of the Cid, answering
an objection, that his sentiments are sometimes
too much refined for persons in deep distress, ob-
serves that, if poets did not indulge sentiments
more ingenious or refined than are prompted
by passion, their performances would often be
low, and extreme grief would never suggest but
exclamations merely. This is to assert that
forced thoughts are more agreeable than those
that are natural, and ought to be preferred. 2.
The second class is of sentiments that may belong
to an ordinary passion, but are not perfectly con-
cordant with it, as tinctured by a singular cna-
racter. In the last act of that excellent comedy
The Careless Husband, Lady Easy, upon Sir
Charles's reformation, is made to express more
violent and turbulent sentiments of joy than are
consistent with the mildness of her character.
Lady Easy-O the soft treasure! O the dear re-
ward of long desiring love. Thus ! thus to have
you mine is something more than happiness;
'tis double life, and madness of abounding joy.

3. The following instances are descriptions rather than sentiments, which compose a third class. Of this descriptive manner of painting the passions there is in the Hippolytus of Euripides, act 5, an illustrious instance, viz. the speech of Theseus, upon hearing of his son's dismal exit. In Racine's tragedy of Esther, the queen, hearing of the decree issued against her people, instead of expressing sentiments suitable to the occasion, turns her attention upon herself, and describes with accuracy her own situation. Juste ciel! tout mon sang dans mes veines se glace. Act 1, sc. 3.

4. The fourth class is of sentiments expressed too early or too late. The following, from Venice Preserved, act 5, at the close of the scene between Belvidera and her father Priuli, is of this class. The account given by Belvidera of the danger she was in, and of her husband's threatening to murder her, ought naturally to have alarmed her relenting father, and to have made him express the most perturbed sentiments. Instead of which, he dissolves into tenderness and love for his daughter, as if he had already delivered her from danger, as if there were a perfect tranquillity:

I'll henceforth be indeed a father; never Never more thus expose, but cherish thee, Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life, Dear as those eyes that weep in fondness o'er thee: Peace to thy heart.

5. Immoral sentiments exposed in their native colors, instead of being concealed or disguised, compose the fifth class. The Lady Macbeth, projecting the death of the king, has the following soliloquy :--

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This speech is not natural. A treacherous murder was never perpetrated even by the most hardened miscreant without compunction: and that the lady here must have been in horrible agitation appears from her invoking the infernal spirits to fill her with cruelty, and to stop up all avenues to remorse. But in that state of mind it is a never-failing artifice of self-deceit to draw the thickest veil over the wicked action, and to extenuate it by all the circumstances that imagination can suggest; and, if the crime cannot bear disguise, the next attempt is to thrust it out of the mind altogether, and to rush on to action without thought. This last was the husband's method:

Strange things I have in head, that will to hand; Which must be acted ere they must be scann'd. Act 3, sc. 5. The lady follows neither of these courses, but in a deliberate manner endeavours to fortify her heart in the commission of an execrable crime, without even attempting to color it. This, we think, is not natural; we hope there is no such wretch to oe found as is here represented.

6.

The last class comprehends sentiments that are unnatural, as being suited to no character nor passion. These may be subdivided into three branches:-1. Sentiments unsuitable to the constitution of man, and to the laws of his nature; 2. inconsistent sentiments; 3. sentiments that are pure rant and extravagance. When the fable is of human affairs, every event, every incident, and every circumstance, ought to be natural, otherwise the imitation is imperfect. But an imperfect imitation is a venial fault, compared with that of running cross to nature. In the Hippolytus of Euripides (act iv. sc. 5.) Hippolytus, wishing for another self in his own situation, 'How much,' says he, should I be touched with his misfortune!' as if it were natural to grieve more for the misfortune of another than for one's own.

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Osmyn. Yet I beheld her-yet-and now no

more.

Turn your light inward, eyes, and view my thought;
So shall you still behold her--. "Twill not be.
O impotence of sight! &c.

Mourning Bride, act 2, sc. 8. No man in his senses ever thought of applying his eyes to discover what passes in his mind; far less of blaming his eyes for not seeing a thought or idea. In Moliere's l'Avare (act iv. sc. 7) Harpagon, being robbed of his money, seizes himself by the arm, mistaking it for that of the robber. This is so absurd as scarce to provoke branch the following example may suffice:— a smile, if it be not at the author. Of the second

-Now bid me run,
And I will strive with things impossible,
Yea, get the better of them.

Julius Caesar, act 2, sc. 3. Of the third branch, take the following samples. Lucan, talking of Pompey's sepulchre, lib. vii. 1.798. According to Rowe's translation:

Where there are seas, or air, or earth, or skies,
Wher'er Rome's empire stretches, Pompey lies.
If Fate decrees he must in Egypt lie,
Let the whole fertile realm his grave supply.
Yield the wide country to his awful shade,
Nor let us dare on any part to tread,
Fearful we violate the mighty dead-!
This supposed omnipresence of Pompey's body
is not only unnatural, but ridiculous. The fol-
lowing passages are pure rant. Coriolanus,
speaking to his mother, says,
What is this?

Your knees to me? to your corrected son?
Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach
Fillop the stars: then let the mutinous winds
Strike the proud cedars 'gainst the fiery sun:
Murd'ring impossibility, to make
What cannot be, slight work!

Coriolanus, act. 5, sc. 3.
Cæsar. Danger knows full well,
That Cæsar is more dangerous than he,
We were two lions litter'd in one day,
And I the elder and more terrible.

Julius Caesar, act. 2, sc. 4. Ventidius. Fram'd in the very pride and boast of So perfect, that the gods who form'd you won

nature

der'd

At their own skill, and cry'd, A lucky hit
Has mended our design. Dryden. All for Love, act. 1.

Not to talk of the impiety of this sentiment, it is ludicrous instead of being lofty. The famous epitaph on Raphael is not less absurd than any of the foregoing passages:

Raphael, timuit, quo sospite, vinci,
Rerum magna parens, et moriente mori.

committed to their charge, not to suffer any light to remain, or any fire to be made near their posts in the night time; neither is any sentry to be relieved, or removed from his post, but by the corporal of the guard. They are not to suffer any one to touch or handle their arms, or in the

Imitated by Pope, in his epitaph on Sir Godfrey night time to come within ten yards of their

Kneller:

Living, great Nature fear'd he might outvie Her works; and dying fears herself may die. Such is the force of imitation: for Pope of himself would never have been guilty of a thought so extravagant.

SENTIMENTAL, from sentiment. Of or belonging to sentiments, in the last sense of the primitive word. This adjective, though in very general use, seems to have been almost overlooked by the lexicographers, much as we daily hear of sentimental plays, toasts, songs, and even journeys. See STERNE. Applied to a person, it signifies the being endued with the most refined and delicate sentiments; applied to a literary work, it implies that the work abounds with sentiments of that kind.

SENTINEL, n.s. Fr. sentinelle; from Lat. sentio. One who watches or keeps guard. Norfolk, hie thee to thy charge; Use careful watch, chuse trusty sentinels.

Shakspeare. Richard III. Counsellors are not commonly so united, but that one counsellor keepeth sentinel over another, so that, if any do counsel out of faction or private ends, it commonly goes to the king's ear.

Bacon's Essays. First, the two eyes, which have the seeing power, Stand as one watchman, spy, or sentinel, Being placed aloft, within the head's high tower; And, though both see, yet both but one thing tell.

Love to our citadel resorts, Through those deceitful sally ports: Our sentinels betray our forts.

Davies.

Denham.

Perhaps they had sentinels waking while they slept; but even this would be unsoldierlike.

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SENTINEL, OF SENTRY, from the Latin sentio, or the Italian sentinella, a private soldier, placed in some post, to watch the approach of the enemy, to prevent surprises, and to stop such as would pass without order, or being discovered who they are. Sentries are placed before the arms of all guards, at the tents and doors of general officers, colonels of regiments, &c. All sentries are to be vigilant on their posts; they are not, on any account, to sing, smoke tobacco, nor suffer any noise to be made near them. They are to have a watchful eye over the things

post.

No person is to strike or abuse a sentry on his post; but, when he has committed a crime, he is to be relieved, and then punished according to the rules and articles of war. A sentinel, on his post in the night, is not to know any body, but by the countersign; when he challenges, and is answered, relief, he calls out stand, relief; advance corporal! upon which the corporal halts his men, and advances alone within a yard of the sentry's firelock, first ordering his party to port arms, on which the sentry does the same, and gives him the same countersign, taking care that no one hears it. See ROUNDS.

A RUNNING SENTINEL is a sentry who is upon the look out, at an advanced post, or near the gates of a fortified place, and is not confined to a particular spot.

SENTINEL PERDU, a soldier posted near an enemy, or in some very dangerous post where he is in hazard of being lost.

SENTINUM, an ancient town of Italy, in Umbria, Liv. x. c. 27 and 30.

SENTIUS (Cneius), a Roman historian, who flourished in the reign of Alexander Severus. He wrote the history of Alexander's life in Latin, or, as others say, in Greek. SENTRY, or Corrupted, I believe, from SEN'TERY, n. s. sentinel, says Johnson; but watch; sentinel; one who watches in a garrison, there is in Ital. sentare, and Span. sentar. A or army, to keep them from surprise. If I do send, dispatch Those sentries to our aid; the rest will serve For a short holding. Shakspeare. Coriolanus. What strength, what art, can then Suffice, or what evasion bear him safe Through the strict senteries, and stations thick Of angels watching round?

Thou, whose nature cannot sleep,
O'er my slumbers sentry keep;
Guard me 'gainst those watchful foes,
Whose eyes are open while mine close.

Milton.

Browne.

The youth of hell strict guard may keep, And set their sentries to the utmost deep. Dryden. One goose they had, 'twas all they could allow, A wakeful sentry, and on duty now.

Id.

Here toils and death, and death's half-brother, sleep,

Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep.

SEPARATE, v. a., v. n., &

SEPARABILITY, N.S. SEPARABLE, adj. SEPARABLENESS, n. s. SEPARATELY, adv. SEPARATENESS, n. 3. SEPARATION, SEPARATIST, SEPARATOR, SEPARATORY, adj.

Id.

[adj.

Fr. separer; Lat. separo. To break; divide

into parts; sever; set apart; withdraw: as a verb neuter, to

part; be divided: as an adJjective, divided; disjoined; secluded; disunited; disengaged from body or matter: separability is the quality of admitting disunion or division: separable,

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