formed the World, and which were themselves eternal, were three in
number. The Subject-matter of things, the Species, or Specific
Essences of things, and what was made out of these, the sensible
objects themselves. These last had no proper or durable existence, but
were in perpetual flux and succession. For as Heraclitus had said that
no man ever passed the same river twice, because the water which he
had passed over once was gone before he could pass over it a second
time; so, in the same manner, no man ever saw, or heard, or touched
the same sensible object twice. When I look at the window, for
example, the visible species, which strikes my eyes this moment,
though resembling, is different from that which struck my eyes the
immediately preceding moment. When I ring the bell, the sound, or
audible species, which I hear this moment, though resembling in the
same manner, is different, however, from that which I heard the moment
before. When I lay my hand on the table, the tangible species which I
feel this moment, though resembling, in the same manner, is
numerically different too from that which I felt the moment before.
Our sensations, therefore, never properly exist or endure one moment;
but, in the very instant of their generation, perish and are
annihilated for ever. Nor are the causes of those sensations more
permanent. No corporeal substance is ever exactly the {398} same,
either in whole or in any assignable part, during two successive,
moments, but by the perpetual addition of new parts, as well as loss
of old ones, is in continual flux and succession. Things of so
fleeting a nature can never be the objects of science, or of any
steady or permanent judgment. While we look at them, in order to
consider them, they are changed and gone, and annihilated for ever.
The objects of science, and of all the steady judgments of the
understanding, must be permanent, unchangeable, always existent, and
liable neither to generation nor corruption, nor alteration of any
kind. Such are the species or specific essences of things. Man is
perpetually changing every particle of his body; and every thought of
his mind is in continual flux and succession. But humanity, or human
nature, is always existent, is always the same, is never generated,
and is never corrupted. This, therefore, is the object of science,
reason, and understanding, as man is the object of sense, and of those
inconstant opinions which are founded upon sense. As the objects of
sense were apprehended to have an external existence, independent of
the act of sensation, so these objects of the understanding were much
more supposed to have an external existence independent of the act of
understanding. Those external essences were, according to Plato, the
exemplars, according to which the Deity formed the world, and all the
sensible objects that are in it. The Deity comprehended within his
infinite essence, all these species, or external exemplars, in the
same manner as he comprehended all sensible objects.
Plato, however, seems to have regarded the first of those as equally
distinct with the second from what we would now call the Ideas or
Thoughts of the Divine Mind,[1] and even to have supposed, that they
had a particular place of existence, beyond the sphere of the visible
{399} corporeal world; though this has been much controverted, both by
the later Platonists, and by some very judicious modern critics, who
have followed the interpretation of the later Platonists, as what did
most {400} honour to the judgment of that renowned philosopher. All
the objects in this world, continued he, are particular and
individual. Here, therefore, the human mind has no opportunity of
seeing any Species, or Universal Nature. Whatever ideas it has,
therefore, of such beings, for it plainly has them, it must derive
from the memory of what it has seen, in some former period of its
existence, when it had an opportunity of visiting the place or Sphere
of Universals. For some time after it is immersed in the body, during
its infancy, its childhood, and a great part of its youth, the
violence of those passions which it derives from the body, and which
are all directed to the particular and individual objects of this
world, hinder it from turning its attention to those Universal
Natures, with which it had been conversant in the world from whence it
came. The Ideas, of these, therefore, seem, in this first period of
its existence here, to be overwhelmed in the confusion of those
turbulent emotions, and to be almost entirely wiped out of its
remembrance. During the continuance of this state, it is incapable of
Reasoning, Science and Philosophy, which are conversant about
Universals. Its whole attention is turned towards particular objects,
concerning which, being directed by no general notions, it forms many
vain and false opinions, and is filled with error, perplexity, and
confusion. But, when age has abated the violence of its passions, and
composed the confusion of its thoughts, it then becomes more capable
of reflection, and of turning its attention to those almost forgotten
ideas of things with which it had been conversant in the former state
of its existence. All the particular objects in this sensible world,
being formed after the eternal exemplars in that intellectual world,
awaken, upon account of their resemblance, insensibly, and by slow
degrees, the almost obliterated ideas of these last. The beauty, which
is shared in different degrees among terrestrial objects, revives the
same idea of that Universal Nature of beauty which exists in the
intellectual world: particular acts of justice, of the universal
nature of justice; particular reasonings, and particular sciences, of
the universal nature of science and reasoning; particular roundnesses,
of the universal nature of roundness; particular squares, of the
universal nature of squareness. Thus science, which is conversant
about Universals, is derived from memory; and to instruct any person
concerning the general nature of any subject, is no more than to
awaken in him the remembrance of what he formerly knew about it. This
both Plato and Socrates imagined they could still further confirm, by
the fallacious experiment, {401} which showed, that a person might be
led to discover himself, without any information, any general truth,
of which he was before ignorant, merely by being asked a number of
properly arranged and connected questions concerning it.
[Footnote 1: He calls them, indeed, Ideas, a word which, in him, in
Aristotle, and all the other writers of earlier antiquity, signifies a
Species, and is perfectly synonymous with that other word [Greek:
Eidos], more frequently made use of by Aristotle. As, by some of the
later sects of philosophers, particularly by the Stoics, all species,
or specific essences, were regarded as mere creatures of the mind,
formed by abstraction, which had no real existence external to the
thoughts that conceived them, the word Idea came, by degrees, to its
present signification, to mean, first, an abstract thought or
conception; and afterwards, a thought or conception of any kind; and
thus became synonymous with that other Greek word, [Greek: Ennoia],
from which it had originally a very different meaning. When the later
Platonists, who lived at a time when the notion of the separate
existence of specific essences was universally exploded, began to
comment upon the writings of Plato, and upon that strange fancy that,
in his writings, there was a double doctrine; and that they were
intended to seem to mean one thing, while at bottom they meant a very
different, which the writings of no man in his senses ever were, or
ever could be intended to do; they represented his doctrine as meaning
no more, than that the Deity formed the world after what we would now
call an Idea, or plan conceived in his own mind, in the same manner as
any other artist. But, if Plato had meant to express no more than this
most natural and simple of all notions, he might surely have expressed
it more plainly, and would hardly, one would think, have talked of it
with so much emphasis, as of something which it required the utmost
reach of thought to comprehend. According to this representation,
Plato's notion of Species, or Universals, was the same with that of
Aristotle. Aristotle, however, does not seem to understand it as such;
he bestows a great part of his Metaphysics upon confuting it, and
opposes it in all his other works; nor does he, in any one of them,
give the least hint, or insinuation, as if it could be suspected that,
by the Ideas of Plato, was meant the thoughts or conceptions of the
Divine Mind. Is it possible that he, who was twenty years in his
school, should, during all that time, have misunderstood him,
especially when his meaning was so very plain and obvious? Neither is
this notion of the separate existence of Species, distinct both from
the mind which conceives them, and from the sensible objects which are
made to resemble them, one of those doctrines which Plato would but
seldom have occasion to talk of. However it may be interpreted, it is
the very basis of his philosophy; neither is there a single dialogue
in all his works which does not refer to it. Shall we suppose, that
that great philosopher, who appears to have been so much superior to
his master in every thing but eloquence, wilfully, and upon all
occasions, misrepresented, not one of the deep and mysterious
doctrines of the philosophy of Plato, but the first and most
fundamental principle of all his reasonings; when the writings of
Plato were in the hands of every body; when his followers and
disciples were spread all over Greece; when almost every Athenian of
distinction, that was nearly of the same age with Aristotle, must have
been bred in his school; when Speusippus, the nephew and successor of
Plato, as well as Xenocrates, who continued the school in the Academy,
at the same time that Aristotle held his in the Lyceum, must have been
ready, at all times, to expose and affront him for such gross
disingenuity. Does not Cicero, does not Seneca understand this
doctrine in the same manner as Aristotle has represented it? Is there
any author in all antiquity who seems to understand it otherwise,
earlier than Plutarch, an author who seems to have been as bad a
critic in philosophy as in history, and to have taken every thing at
second-hand in both, and who lived after the origin of that eclectic
philosophy, from whence the later Platonists arose, and who seems
himself to have been one of that sect? Is there any one passage in any
Greek author, near the time of Aristotle and Plato, in which the word
Idea is used in its present meaning, to signify a thought or
conception? Are not the words, which in all languages express reality
or existence, directly opposed to those which express thought, or
conception only? Or, is there any other difference betwixt a thing
that exists, and a thing that does not exist, except this, that the
one is a mere conception, and that the other is something more than a
conception? With what propriety, therefore, could Plato talk of those
eternal species, as of the only things which had any real existence,
if they were no more than the conceptions of the Divine Mind? Had not
the Deity, according to Plato, as well as according to the Stoics,
from all eternity, the idea of every individual, as well as of every
species, and of the state in which every individual was to be, in each
different instance of its existence? Were not all the divine ideas,
therefore, of each individual, or of all the different states, which
each individual was to be in during the course of its existence,
equally eternal and unalterable with those of the species? With what
sense, therefore, could Plato say, that the first were eternal,
because the Deity had conceived them from all eternity, since he had
conceived the others from all eternity too, and since his ideas of the
Species could, in this respect, have no advantage of those of the
individual? Does not Plato, in many different places, talk of the
Ideas of Species or Universals as innate, and having been impressed
upon the mind in its state of pre-existence, when it had an
opportunity of viewing these Species as they are in themselves, and
not as they are expressed in their copies, or representatives upon
earth? But if the only place of the existence of those Species was the
Divine Mind, will not this suppose, that Plato either imagined, like
Father Malbranche, that in its state of pre-existence, the mind saw
all things in God: or that it was itself an emanation of the Divinity?
That he maintained the first opinion, will not be pretended by any
body who is at all versed in the history of science. That enthusiastic
notion, though it may seem to be favoured by some passages in the
Fathers, was never, it is well known, coolly and literally maintained
by any body before that Cartesian philosopher. That the human mind was
itself an emanation of the Divine, though it was the doctrine of the
Stoics, was by no means that of Plato; though, upon the notion of a
pretended double doctrine, the contrary has lately been asserted.
According to Plato, the Deity formed the soul of the world out of that
substance which is always the same, that is, out of Species or
Universals; out of that which is always different, that is, out of
corporeal substances; and out of a substance that was of a middle
nature between these, which it is not easy to understand what he meant
by. Out of a part of the same composition, he made those inferior
intelligences who animated the celestial spheres, to whom he delivered
the remaining part of it, to form from thence the souls of men and
animals. The souls of those inferior deities, though made out of a
similar substance or composition, were not regarded as parts or
emanations of that of the world; nor were those of animals, in the
same manner, regarded as parts or emanations of those inferior
deities: much less were any of them regarded as parts, or emanations
of the great Author of all things.]
The more the soul was accustomed to the consideration of those
Universal Natures, the less it was attached to any particular and
individual objects; it approached the nearer to the original
perfection of its nature, from which, according to this philosophy, it
had fallen. Philosophy, which accustoms it to consider the general
Essence of things only, and to abstract from all their particular and
sensible circumstances, was, upon this account, regarded as the great
purifier of the soul. As death separated the soul from the body, and
from the bodily senses and passions, it restored it to that
intellectual world, from whence it had originally descended, where no
sensible Species called off its attention from those general Essences
of things. Philosophy, in this life, habituating it to the same
considerations, brings it, in some degree, to that state of happiness
and perfection, to which death restores the souls of just men in a
life to come.
Such was the doctrine of Plato concerning the Species or Specific
Essence of things. This, at least, is what his words seem to import,
and thus he is understood by Aristotle, the most intelligent and the
most renowned of all his disciples. It is a doctrine, which, like many
of the other doctrines of abstract Philosophy, is more coherent in the
expression than in the idea; and which seems to have arisen, more from
the nature of language, than from the nature of things. With all its
imperfections it was excusable, in the beginnings of philosophy, and
is not a great deal more remote from the truth, than many others which
have since been substituted in its room by some of the greatest
pretenders to accuracy and precision. Mankind have had, at all times,
a strong propensity to realize their own abstractions, of which we
shall immediately see an example, in the notions of that very
philosopher who first exposed the ill-grounded foundation of those
Ideas, or Universals, of Plato and Timæus. To explain the nature, and
to account for the origin of general Ideas, is, even at this day, the
greatest difficulty in abstract philosophy. How the human mind, when
it reasons concerning the general nature of triangles, should either
conceive, as Mr. Locke imagines it does, the idea of a triangle, which
is neither obtusangular, nor rectangular, nor acutangular; but which
was at once both none and of all those together; or should, as
Malbranche thinks necessary for this purpose, comprehend at once,
within its finite capacity, all possible triangles of all possible
forms and dimensions, which are infinite in number, is a question, to
which it is surely not easy to give a satisfactory answer. Malbranche,
to solve it, had recourse to the enthusiastic and unintelligible
notion of the intimate union of the human mind with the divine, in
whose infinite {402} essence the immensity of such species could alone
be comprehended; and in which alone, therefore, all finite
intelligences could have an opportunity of viewing them. If, after
more than two thousand years reasoning about this subject, this
ingenious and sublime philosopher was forced to have recourse to so
strange a fancy, in order to explain it, can we wonder that Plato, in
the very first dawnings of science, should, for the same purpose,
adopt an hypothesis, which has been thought, without much reason,
indeed, to have some affinity to that of Malbranche, and which is not
more out of the way?
What seems to have misled those early philosophers, was, the notion,
which appears, at first, natural enough, that those things, out of
which any object is composed, must exist antecedent to that object.
But the things out of which all particular objects seem to be
composed, are the stuff or matter of those objects, and the form or
specific Essence, which determines them to be of this or that class of
things. These, therefore, it was thought, must have existed antecedent
to the object which was made up between them. Plato, who held, that
the sensible world, which, according to him, is the world of
individuals, was made in time, necessarily conceived, that both the
universal matter, the object of spurious reason, and the specific
essence, the object of proper reason and philosophy out of which it
was composed, must have had a separate existence from all eternity.
This intellectual world, very different from the intellectual world of
Cudworth, though much of the language of the one has been borrowed
from that of the other, was necessarily and always existent; whereas
the sensible world owed its origin to the free will and bounty of its
author.
A notion of this kind, as long as it is expressed in very general
language; as long as it is not much rested upon, nor attempted to be
very particularly and distinctly explained, passes easily enough,
through the indolent imagination, accustomed to substitute words in
the room of ideas; and if the words seem to hang easily together,
requiring no great precision in the ideas. It vanishes, indeed; is
discovered to be altogether incomprehensible, and eludes the grasp of
the imagination, upon an attentive consideration. It requires,
however, an attentive consideration; and if it had been as fortunate
as many other opinions of the same kind, and about the same subject,
it might, without examination, have continued to be the current
philosophy for a century or two. Aristotle, however, seems immediately
to have discovered, that it was impossible to conceive, as actually
existent, either that general matter, which was not determined by any
particular species, or those species which were not embodied, if one
may say so, in some particular portion of matter. Aristotle, too,
held, as we have already observed the eternity of the sensible world.
Though he held, therefore, that all sensible objects were made up of
two principles, both of which, he calls, equally, substances, the
matter and the specific essence, he was {403} not obliged to hold,
like Plato, that those principles existed prior in the order of time
to the objects which they afterwards composed. They were prior, he
said, in nature, but not in time, according to a distinction which was
of use to him upon some other occasion. He distinguished, too, betwixt
actual and potential existence. By the first, he seems to have
understood what is commonly meant by existence or reality; by the
second, the bare possibility of existence. His meaning, I say, seems
to amount to this; though he does not explain it precisely in this
manner. Neither the material Essence of body could, according to him,
exist actually without being determined by some Specific Essence, to
some particular class of things, nor any Specific Essence without
being embodied in some particular portion of matter. Each of these two
principles, however, could exist potentially in this separate state.
That matter existed potentially, which, being endowed with a
particular form, could be brought into actual existence; and that
form, which, by being embodied in a particular portion of matter,
could, in the same manner, be called forth into the class of complete
realities. This potential existence of matter and form, he sometimes
talks of, in expressions which resemble those of Plato, to whose
notion of separate Essence it bears a very great affinity.
Aristotle, who seems in many things original, and who endeavoured to
seem to be so in all things, added the principle of privation to those
of matter and form, which he had derived from the ancient Pythagorean
school. When Water is changed into Air, the transmutation is brought
about by the material principle of those two elements being deprived
of the form of Water, and then assuming the form of Air. Privation,
therefore, was a third principle opposite to form, which entered into
the generation of every Species, which was always from some other
Species. It was a principle of generation, but not of composition, as
is most obvious.
The Stoics, whose opinions were, in all the different parts of
philosophy, either the same with, or very nearly allied to those of
Aristotle and Plato, though often disguised in very different
language, held, that all things, even the elements themselves, were
compounded of two principles, upon one of which depended all the
active, and upon the other all the passive, powers of these bodies.
The last of these, they called Matter; the first, the Cause, by which
they meant the very same thing which Aristotle and Plato understood,
by their specific Essences. Matter, according to the Stoics, could
have no existence separate from the cause or efficient principle which
determined it to some particular class of things. Neither could the
efficient principle exist separately from the material, in which it
was always necessarily embodied. Their opinion, therefore, so far
coincided with that of the old Peripatetics. The efficient principle,
they said, was the Deity. By which they meant, that it was a detached
portion of the etherial and divine nature, {404} which penetrated all
things, that constituted what Plato would have called the Specific
Essence of each individual object; and so far their opinion coincides
pretty nearly with that of the latter Platonists, who held, that the
Specific Essences of all things were detached portions of their
created deity, the soul of the world; and with that of some of the
Arabian and Scholastic Commentators of Aristotle, who held that the
substantial forms of all things descended from those Divine Essences
which animated the Celestial Spheres. Such was the doctrine of the
four principal Sects of the ancient Philosophers, concerning the
Specific Essences of things, of the old Pythagoreans, of the
Academical, the Peripatetic, and the Stoical Sects.
As this doctrine of Specific Essences seems naturally enough to have
arisen from that ancient system of Physics, which I have above
described, and which is, by no means, devoid of probability, so many
of the doctrines of that system, which seems to us, who have been long
accustomed to another, the most incomprehensible, necessarily flow
from this metaphysical notion. Such are those of generation,
corruption, and alteration; of mixture, condensation, and rarefaction.
A body was generated or corrupted, when it changed its Specific
Essence, and passed from one denomination to another. It was altered
when it changed only some of its qualities, but still retained the
same Specific Essence, and the same denomination. Thus, when a flower
was withered, it was not corrupted; though some of its qualities were
changed, it still retained the Specific Essence, and therefore justly
passed under the denomination of a flower. But, when, in the further
progress of its decay, it crumbled into earth, it was corrupted; it
lost the Specific Essence, or substantial form of the flower, and
assumed that of the earth, and therefore justly changed its
denomination.
The Specific Essence, or universal nature that was lodged in each
particular class of bodies, was not itself the object of any of our
senses, but could be perceived only by the understanding. It was by
the sensible qualities, however, that we judged of the Specific
Essence of each object. Some of these sensible qualities, therefore,
we regarded as essential, or such as showed, by their presence or
absence, the presence or absence of that essential form from which
they necessarily flowed. Others were accidental, or such whose
presence or absence had no such necessary consequences. The first of
these two sorts of qualities was called Properties; the second,
Accidents.
In the Specific Essence of each object itself, they distinguished two
parts; one of which was peculiar and characteristical of the one class
of things of which that particular object was an individual, the other
was common to it with some other higher classes of things. These two
parts were, to the Specific Essence, pretty much what the Matter and
the Specific Essence were to each individual body. The one, which was
called the Genus, was modified and determined by the other, {405}
which was called the Specific Difference, pretty much in the same
manner as the universal matter contained in each body was modified and
determined by the Specific Essence of that particular class of bodies.
These four, with the Specific Essence or Species itself, made up the
number of the Five Universals, so well known in the schools by the
names of Genus, Species, Differentia, Proprium, and Accidens.
* * * * *
----------
OF THE
NATURE OF THAT IMITATION
WHICH TAKES PLACE IN WHAT ARE CALLED
THE IMITATIVE ARTS.
-----
PART I.
THE most perfect imitation of an object of any kind must in all cases,
it is evident, be another object of the same kind, made as exactly as
possible after the same model. What, for example, would be the most
perfect imitation of the carpet which now lies before me?--Another
carpet, certainly, wrought as exactly as possible after the same
pattern. But, whatever might be the merit or beauty of this second
carpet, it would not be supposed to derive any from the circumstance
of its having been made in imitation of the first. This circumstance
of its being not an original, but a copy, would even be considered as
some diminution of that merit; a greater or smaller, in proportion as
the object was of a nature to lay claim to a greater or smaller degree
of admiration. It would not much diminish the merit of a common
carpet, because in such trifling objects, which at best can lay claim
to so little beauty or merit of any kind, we do not always think it
worth while to affect originality: it would diminish a good deal that
of a carpet of very exquisite workmanship. In objects of still
greater importance, this exact, or, as it would be called, this
servile imitation, would be considered as the most unpardonable
blemish. To build another St. Peter's or St. Paul's church, of exactly
the same dimensions, proportions, and ornaments with the present
buildings at Rome or London, would be supposed to argue such a
miserable barrenness of genius and invention in the architect as would
disgrace the most expensive magnificence.
The exact resemblance of the correspondent parts of the same object
{406} is frequently considered as a beauty, and the want of it as a
deformity; as in the correspondent members of the human body, in the
opposite wings of the same building, in the opposite trees of the same
alley, in the correspondent compartments of the same piece of
carpet-work, or of the same flower-garden, in the chairs or tables
which stand in the correspondent parts of the same room, etc. But in
objects of the same kind, which in other respects are regarded as
altogether separate and unconnected, this exact resemblance is seldom
considered as a beauty, nor the want of it as a deformity. A man, and
in the same manner a horse, is handsome or ugly, each of them, on
account of his own intrinsic beauty or deformity, without any regard
to their resembling or not resembling, the one, another man, or the
other, another horse. A set of coach-horses, indeed, is supposed to be
handsomer when they are all exactly matched; but each horse is, in
this case, considered not as a separated and unconnected object, or as
a whole by himself, but as a part of another whole, to the other parts
of which he ought to bear a certain correspondence: separated from the
set, he derives neither beauty from his resemblance, nor deformity
from his unlikeness to the other horses which compose it.
Even in the correspondent parts of the same object, we frequently
require no more than a resemblance in the general outline. If the
inferior members of those correspondent parts are too minute to be
seen distinctly, without a separate and distinct examination of each
part by itself, as a separate and unconnected object, we should
sometimes even be displeased if the resemblance was carried beyond
this general outline. In the correspondent parts of a room we
frequently hang pictures of the same size; those pictures, however,
resemble one another in nothing but the frame, or, perhaps, in the
general character of the subject; if the one is a landscape, the other
is a landscape too; if the one represents a religious or a
bacchanalian subject, its companion represents another of the same
kind. Nobody ever thought of repeating the same picture in each
correspondent frame. The frame, and the general character of two or
three pictures, is as much as the eye can comprehend at one view, or
from one station. Each picture, in order, to be seen distinctly, and
understood thoroughly, must be viewed from a particular station, and
examined by itself as a separate and unconnected object. In a hall or
portico, adorned with statues, the niches, or perhaps the pedestals,
may exactly resemble one another, but the statues are always different
Even the masks which are sometimes carried upon the different
key-stones of the same arcade, or of the correspondent doors and
windows of the same front, though they may all resemble one another in
the general outline, yet each of them has always its own peculiar
features, and a grimace of its own. There are some Gothic buildings in
which the correspondent windows resemble one another only in the
general outline, and not in the smaller {407} ornaments and
subdivisions. These are different in each, and the architect had
considered them as too minute to be seen distinctly, without a
particular and separate examination of each window by itself, as a
separate and unconnected object. A variety of this sort, however, I
think, is not agreeable. In objects which are susceptible only of a
certain inferior order of beauty, such as the frames of pictures, the
niches or the pedestals of statues, &c., there seems frequently to be
affectation in the study of variety, of which the merit is scarcely
ever sufficient to compensate the want of that perspicuity and
distinctness, of that easiness to be comprehended and remembered,
which is the natural effect of exact uniformity. In a portico of the
Corinthian or Ionic order, each column resembles every other, not only
in the general outline, but in all the minutest ornaments; though some
of them, in order to be seen distinctly, may require a separate and
distinct examination in each column, and in the entablature of each
intercolumnation. In the inlaid tables, which, according to the
present fashion, are sometimes fixed in the correspondent parts of the
same room, the pictures only are different in each. All the other more
frivolous and fanciful ornaments are commonly, so far at least as I
have observed the fashion, the same in them all. Those ornaments,
however, in order to be seen distinctly, require a distinct
examination of each table.
The extraordinary resemblance of two natural objects, of twins, for
example, is regarded as a curious circumstance; which, though it does
not increase, yet does not diminish the beauty of either, considered
as a separate and unconnected object. But the exact resemblance of two
productions of art, seems to be always considered as some diminution
of the merit of at least one of them; as it seems to prove, that one
of them, at least, is a copy either of the other, or of some other
original. One may say, even of the copy of a picture, that it derives
its merit, not so much from its resemblance to the original, as from
its resemblance to the object which the original was meant to
resemble. The owner of the copy, so far from setting any high value
upon its resemblance to the original, is often anxious to destroy any
value or merit which it might derive from this circumstance. He is
often anxious to persuade both himself and other people that it is not
a copy, but an original, of which what passes for the original is only
a copy. But, whatever merit a copy may derive from its resemblance to
the original, an original can derive none from the resemblance of its
copy.
But though a production of art seldom derives any merit from its
resemblance to another object of the same kind, it frequently derives
a great deal from its resemblance to an object of a different kind,
whether that object be a production of art or of nature. A painted
cloth, the work of some laborious Dutch artist, so curiously shaded
and coloured as to represent the pile and softness of a woollen one,
might derive some merit from its resemblance even to the sorry carpet
which now {408} lies before me. The copy might, and probably would, in
this case, be of much greater value than the original. But if this
carpet was represented as spread, either upon a floor or upon a table,
and projecting from the background of the picture, with exact
observation of perspective, and of light and shade, the merit of the
imitation would be still even greater.
In Painting, a plain surface of one kind is made to resemble, not only
a plain surface of another, but all the three dimensions of a solid
substance. In Statuary and Sculpture, a solid substance of one kind,
is made to resemble a solid substance of another. The disparity
between the object imitating, and the object imitated, is much greater
in the one art than in the other; and the pleasure arising from the
imitation seems greater in proportion as this disparity is greater.
In Painting, the imitation frequently pleases, though the original
object be indifferent, or even offensive. In Statuary and Sculpture it
is otherwise. The imitation seldom pleases, unless the original object
be in a very high degree either great, or beautiful, or interesting. A
butcher's-stall, or a kitchen-dresser, with the objects which they
commonly present, are not certainly the happiest subjects, even for
Painting. They have, however, been represented with so much care and
success by some Dutch masters, that it is impossible to view the
pictures without some degree of pleasure. They would be most absurd
subjects for Statuary or Sculpture, which are, however, capable of
representing them. The picture of a very ugly or deformed man, such as
Æsop, or Scarron, might not make a disagreeable piece of furniture.
The statue certainly would. Even a vulgar ordinary man or woman,
engaged in a vulgar ordinary action, like what we see with so much
pleasure in the pictures of Rembrandt, would be too mean a subject for
Statuary. Jupiter, Hercules, and Apollo, Venus and Diana, the Nymphs
and the Graces, Bacchus, Mercury, Antinous, and Meleager, the
miserable death of Laocoon, the melancholy fate of the children of
Niobe, the Wrestlers, the fighting, the dying gladiator, the figures
of gods and goddesses, of heroes and heroines, the most perfect forms
of the human body, placed either in the noblest attitudes, or in the
most interesting situations which the human imagination is capable of
conceiving, are the proper, and therefore have always been the
favourite, subjects of Statuary: that art cannot, without degrading
itself, stoop to represent any thing that is offensive, or mean, or
even indifferent. Painting is not so disdainful; and, though capable
of representing the noblest objects, it can, without forfeiting its
title to please, submit to imitate those of a much more humble nature.
The merit of the imitation alone, and without any merit in the
imitated object, is capable of supporting the dignity of Painting: it
cannot support that of Statuary. There would seem, therefore, to be
more merit in the one species of imitation than in the other.
{409} In Statuary, scarcely any drapery is agreeable. The best of the
ancient statues were either altogether naked or almost naked; and
those of which any considerable part of the body is covered, are
represented as clothed in wet linen--a species of clothing which most
certainly never was agreeable to the fashion of any country. This
drapery too is drawn so tight, as to express beneath its narrow
foldings the exact form and outline of any limb, and almost of every
muscle of the body. The clothing which thus approached the nearest to
no clothing at all, had, it seems, in the judgment of the great
artists of antiquity, been that which was most suitable to Statuary. A
great painter of the Roman school, who had formed his manner almost
entirely upon the study of the ancient statues, imitated at first
their drapery in his pictures; but he soon found that in Painting it
had the air of meanness and poverty, as if the persons who wore it
could scarce afford clothes enough to cover them; and that larger
folds, and a looser and more flowing drapery, were more suitable to
the nature of his art. In Painting, the imitation of so very inferior
an object as a suit of clothes is capable of pleasing; and, in order
to give this object all the magnificence of which it is capable, it is
necessary that the folds should be large, loose, and flowing. It is
not necessary in Painting that the exact form and outline of every
limb, and almost of every muscle of the body, should be expressed
beneath the folds of the drapery; it is sufficient if these are so
disposed as to indicate in general the situation and attitude of the
principal limbs. Painting, by the mere force and merit of its
imitation, can venture, without the hazard of displeasing, to
substitute, upon many occasions, the inferior in the room of the
superior object, by making the one, in this manner, cover and entirely
conceal a great part of the other. Statuary can seldom venture to do
this, but with the utmost reserve and caution; and the same drapery,
which is noble and magnificent in the one art, appears clumsy and
awkward in the other. Some modern artists, however, have attempted to
introduce into Statuary the drapery which is peculiar to Painting. It
may not, perhaps, upon every occasion, be quite so ridiculous as the
marble periwigs in Westminster Abbey: but if it does not always appear
clumsy and awkward, it is at best always insipid and uninteresting.
It is not the want of colouring which hinders many things from
pleasing in Statuary which please in Painting; it is the want of that
degree of disparity between the imitating and the imitated object,
which is necessary, in order to render interesting the imitation of an
object which is itself not interesting. Colouring, when added to
Statuary, so far from increasing, destroys almost entirely the
pleasure which we receive from the imitation; because it takes away
the great source of that pleasure, the disparity between the imitating
and the imitated object. That one solid and coloured object should
exactly resemble another solid and coloured object, seems to be a
matter of no {410} great wonder or admiration. A painted statue,
though it may resemble a human figure much more exactly than any
statue which is not painted, is generally acknowledged to be a
disagreeable and even an offensive object; and so far are we from
being pleased with this superior likeness, that we are never satisfied
with it; and, after viewing it again and again, we always find that it
is not equal to what we are disposed to imagine it might have been:
though it should seem to want scarce any thing but the life, we could
not pardon it for thus wanting what it is altogether impossible it
should have. The works of Mrs. Wright, a self-taught artist of great
merit, are perhaps more perfect in this way than any thing I have ever
seen. They do admirably well to be seen now and then as a show; but
the best of them we shall find, if brought home to our own house, and
placed in a situation where it was to come often into view, would
make, instead of an ornamental, a most offensive piece of household
furniture. Painted statues, accordingly, are universally reprobated,
and we scarce ever meet with them. To colour the eyes of statues is
not altogether so uncommon: even this, however, is disapproved by all
good judges. 'I cannot bear it,' (a gentleman used to say, of great
knowledge and judgment in this art), 'I cannot bear it; I always want
them to speak to me.'
Artificial fruits and flowers sometimes imitate so exactly the natural
objects which they represent, that they frequently deceive us. We soon
grow weary of them, however; and, though they seem to want nothing but
the freshness and the flavour of natural fruits and flowers, we cannot
pardon them, in the same manner, for thus wanting what it is
altogether impossible they should have. But we do not grow weary of a
good flower and fruit painting. We do not grow weary of the foliage of
the Corinthian capital, or of the flowers which sometimes ornament the
frieze of that order. Such imitations, however, never deceive us;
their resemblance to the original objects is always much inferior to
that of artificial fruits and flowers. Such as it is, however, we are
contented with it; and, where there is such disparity between the
imitating and the imitated objects, we find that it is as great as it
can be, or as we expect that it should be. Paint that foliage and
those flowers with the natural colours, and, instead of pleasing more,
they will please much less. The resemblance, however, will be much
greater; but the disparity between the imitating and the imitated
objects will be so much less, that even this superior resemblance will
not satisfy us. Where the disparity is so very great, on the contrary,
we are often contented with the most imperfect resemblance; with the
very imperfect resemblance, for example, both as to the figure and the
colour, of fruits and flowers in shell-work.
It may be observed, however, that, though in Sculpture the imitation
of flowers and foliage pleases as an ornament of architecture, as a
part of the dress which is to set off the beauty of a different and a
more {411} important object, it would not please alone, or as a
separate and unconnected object, in the same manner as a fruit and
flower painting pleases. Flowers and foliage, how elegant and
beautiful soever, are not sufficiently interesting; they have not
dignity enough, if I may say so, to be proper subjects for a piece of
Sculpture, which is to please alone, and not to appear as the
ornamental appendage of some other object.
In Tapestry and Needle-work, in the same manner as in Painting, a
plain surface is sometimes made to represent all the three dimensions
of a solid substance. But both the shuttle of the weaver, and the
needle of the embroiderer, are instruments of imitation so much
inferior to the pencil of the painter, that we are not surprised to
find a proportionable inferiority in their productions. We have all
more or less experience that they usually are much inferior: and, in
appreciating a piece of Tapestry or Needle-work, we never compare the
imitation of either with that of a good picture, for it never could
stand that comparison, but with that of other pieces of Tapestry or
Needle-work. We take into consideration, not only the disparity
between the imitating and the imitated object, but the awkwardness of
the instruments of imitation; and if it is as well as any thing that
can be expected from these, if it is better than the greater part of
what actually comes from them, we are often not only contented but
highly pleased.
A good painter will often execute in a few days a subject which would
employ the best tapestry-weaver for many years; though, in proportion
to his time, therefore, the latter is always much worse paid than the
former, yet his work in the end comes commonly much dearer to market.
The great expense of good Tapestry, the circumstance which confines it
to the palaces of princes and of great lords, gives it, in the eyes
of the greater part of the people, an air of riches and magnificence,
which contributes still further to compensate the imperfection of its
imitation. In arts which address themselves, not to the prudent and
the wise, but to the rich and the great, to the proud and the vain, we
ought not to wonder if the appearances of great expense, of being what
few people can purchase, of being one of the surest characteristics of
great fortune, should often stand in the place of exquisite beauty,
and contribute equally to recommend their productions. As the idea of
expense seems often to embellish, so that of cheapness seems as
frequently to tarnish the lustre even of very agreeable objects. The
difference between real and false jewels is what even the experienced
eye of a jeweller can sometimes with difficulty distinguish. Let an
unknown lady, however, come into a public assembly, with a head-dress
which appears to be very richly adorned with diamonds, and let a
jeweller only whisper in our ear that they are false stones, not only
the lady will immediately sink in our imagination from the rank of a
princess to that of a very ordinary woman, but the {412} head-dress,
from being an object of the most splendid magnificence, will at once
become an impertinent piece of tawdry and tinsel finery.
It was some years ago the fashion to ornament a garden with yew and
holly trees, clipped into the artificial shapes of pyramids, and
columns, and vases, and obelisks. It is now the fashion to ridicule
this taste as unnatural. The figure of a pyramid or obelisk, however,
is not more unnatural to a yew-tree than to a block of porphyry or
marble. When the yew-tree is presented to the eye in this artificial
shape, the gardener does not mean that it should be understood to have
grown in that shape: he means, first, to give it the same beauty of
regular figure, which pleases so much in porphyry and marble; and,
secondly, to imitate in a growing tree the ornaments of those precious
materials: he means to make an object of one kind resembling another
object of a very different kind; and to the original beauty of figure
to join the relative beauty of imitation: but the disparity between
the imitating and the imitated object is the foundation of the beauty
of imitation. It is because the one object does not naturally resemble
the other, that we are so much pleased with it, when by art it is made
to do so. The shears of the gardener, it may be said, indeed, are very
clumsy instruments of Sculpture. They are so, no doubt, when employed
to imitate the figures of men, or even of animals. But in the simple
and regular forms of pyramids, vases, and obelisks, even the shears of
the gardener do well enough. Some allowance, too, is naturally made
for the necessary imperfection of the instrument, in the same manner
as in Tapestry and Needle-work. In short, the next time you have an
opportunity of surveying those out-of-fashion ornaments, endeavour
only to let yourself alone, and to restrain for a few minutes the
foolish passion for playing the critic, and you will be sensible that
they are not without some degree of beauty; that they give the air of
neatness and correct culture at least to the whole garden; and that
they are not unlike what the 'retired leisure, that' (as Milton says)
'in trim gardens takes his pleasure,' might be amused with. What then,
it may be said, has brought them into such universal disrepute among
us? In a pyramid or obelisk of marble, we know that the materials are
expensive, and that the labour which wrought them into that shape must
have been still more so. In a pyramid or obelisk of yew, we know that
the materials could cost very little, and the labour still less. The
former are ennobled by their expense; the latter degraded by their
cheapness. In the cabbage-garden of a tallow-chandler we may sometimes
perhaps have seen as many columns and vases and other ornaments in
yew, as there are in marble and porphyry at Versailles: it is this
vulgarity which has disgraced them. The rich and the great, the proud
and the vain will not admit into their gardens an ornament which the
meanest of the people can have as well as they. The taste for these
ornaments came originally from France; where, notwithstanding that
{413} inconstancy of fashion with which we sometimes reproach the
natives of that country, it still continues in good repute. In France,
the condition of the inferior ranks of people is seldom so happy as it
frequently is in England; and you will there seldom find even pyramids
and obelisks of yew in the garden of a tallow-chandler. Such
ornaments, not having in that country been degraded by their
vulgarity, have not yet been excluded from the gardens of princes and
lords.
The works of the great masters in Statuary and Painting, it is to be
observed, never produce their effect by deception. They never are, and
it never is intended that they should be, mistaken for the real
objects which they represent. Painted Statuary may sometimes deceive
an inattentive eye: proper Statuary never does. The little pieces of
perspective in Painting, which it is intended should please by
deception, represent always some very simple, as well as
insignificant, objects: a roll of paper, for example, or the steps of
a staircase, in the dark corner of some passage or gallery. They are
generally the works too of some very inferior artists. After being
seen once, and producing the little surprise which it is meant they
should excite, together with the mirth which commonly accompanies it,
they never please more, but appear to be ever after insipid and
tiresome.
The proper pleasure which we derive from those two imitative arts, so
far from being the effect of deception, is altogether incompatible
with it. That pleasure is founded altogether upon our wonder at seeing
an object of one kind represent so well an object of a very different
kind, and upon our admiration of the art which surmounts so happily
that disparity which Nature had established between them. The nobler
works of Statuary and Painting appear to us a sort of wonderful
phenomena, differing in this respect from the wonderful phenomena of
Nature, that they carry, as it were, their own explication along with
them, and demonstrate, even to the eye, the way and manner in which
they are produced. The eye, even of an unskilful spectator,
immediately discerns, in some measure, how it is that a certain
modification of figure in Statuary, and of brighter and darker colours
in Painting, can represent, with so much truth and vivacity, the
actions, passions, and behaviour of men, as well as a great variety of
other objects. The pleasing wonder of ignorance is accompanied with
the still more pleasing satisfaction of science. We wonder and are
amazed at the effect; and we are pleased ourselves, and happy to find
that we can comprehend, in some measure, how that wonderful effect is
produced upon us.
A good looking-glass represents the objects which are set before it
with much more truth and vivacity than either Statuary or Painting.
But, though the science of optics may explain to the understanding,
the looking-glass itself does not at all demonstrate to the eye how
this effect is brought about. It may excite the wonder of ignorance;
and {414} in a clown, who had never beheld a looking-glass before, I
have seen that wonder rise almost to rapture and extasy; but it cannot
give the satisfaction of science. In all looking-glasses the effects
are produced by the same means, applied exactly in the same manner. In
every different statue and picture the effects are produced, though by
similar, yet not by the same means; and those means too are applied in
a different manner in each. Every good statue and picture is a fresh
wonder, which at the same time carries, in some measure, its own
explication along with it. After a little use and experience, all
looking-glasses cease to be wonders altogether; and even the ignorant
become so familiar with them, as not to think that their effects
require any explication. A looking-glass, besides, can represent only
present objects; and, when the wonder is once fairly over, we choose,
in all cases, rather to contemplate the substance than to gaze at the
shadow. One's own face becomes then the most agreeable object which a
looking-glass can represent to us, and the only object which we do not
soon grow weary with looking at; it is the only present object of
which we can see only the shadow: whether handsome or ugly, whether
old or young, it is the face of a friend always, of which the features
correspond exactly with whatever sentiment, emotion, or passion we may
happen at that moment to feel.
In Statuary, the means by which the wonderful effect is brought about
appear more simple and obvious than in Painting; where the disparity
between the imitating and the imitated object being much greater, the
art which can conquer that greater disparity appears evidently, and
almost to the eye, to be founded upon a much deeper science, or upon
principles much more abstruse and profound. Even in the meanest
subjects we can often trace with pleasure the ingenious means by which
Painting surmounts this disparity. But we cannot do this in Statuary,
because the disparity not being so great, the means do not appear so
ingenious. And it is upon this account, that in Painting we are often
delighted with the representation of many things, which in Statuary
would appear insipid, and not worth the looking at.
It ought to be observed, however, that though in Statuary the art of
imitation appears, in many respects, inferior to what it is in
Painting, yet, in a room ornamented with both statues and pictures of
nearly equal merit, we shall generally find that the statues draw off
our eye from the pictures. There is generally but one or little more
than one, point of view from which a picture can be seen with
advantage, and it always presents to the eye precisely the same
object. There are many different points of view from which a statue
may be seen with equal advantage, and from each it presents a
different object. There is more variety in the pleasure which we
receive from a good statue, than in that which we receive from a good
picture; and one statue may frequently be the subject of many good
pictures or drawings, all different {415} from one another. The
shadowy relief and projection of a picture, besides, is much
flattened, and seems almost to vanish away altogether, when brought
into comparison with the real and solid body which stands by it. How
nearly soever these two arts may seem to be akin, they accord so very
ill with one another, that their different productions ought, perhaps,
scarce ever to be seen together.
-----
PART II.
AFTER the pleasures which arise from the gratification of the bodily
appetites, there seem to be none more natural to man than Music and
Dancing. In the progress of art and improvement they are, perhaps, the
first and earliest pleasures of his own invention; for those which
arise from the gratification of the bodily appetites cannot be said to
be his own invention. No nation has yet been discovered so uncivilized
as to be altogether without them. It seems even to be amongst the most
barbarous nations that the use and practice of them is both most
frequent and most universal, as among the negroes of Africa and the
savage tribes of America. In civilized nations, the inferior ranks of
people have very little leisure, and the superior ranks have many
other amusements; neither the one nor the other, therefore, can spend
much of their time in Music and Dancing. Among savage nations, the
great body of the people have frequently great intervals of leisure,
and they have scarce any other amusement; they naturally, therefore,
spend a great part of their time in almost the only one they have.
What the ancients called Rhythmus, what we call Time or Measure, is
the connecting principle of those two arts; Music consisting in a
succession of a certain sort of sounds, and Dancing in a succession of
a certain sort of steps, gestures, and motions, regulated according to
time or measure, and thereby formed, into a sort of whole or system;
which in the one art is called a song or tune, and in the other a
dance; the time or measure of the dance corresponding always exactly
with that of the song or tune which accompanies and directs it.[1]
[Footnote 1: The Author's Observations on the Affinity between Music,
Dancing, and Poetry, are annexed to the end of Part III. of this
Essay.]
The human voice, as it is always the best, so it would naturally be
the first and earliest of all musical instruments: in singing, or in
its first attempts towards singing, it would naturally employ sounds
as similar as possible to those which it had been accustomed to; that
is, it would employ words of some kind or other, pronouncing them only
in time and measure, and generally with a more melodious tone than had
been usual in common conversation. Those words, however, might not,
and probably would not, for a long time have any meaning, but might
resemble the syllables which we make use of in _fol-faing_, or
the {416} _derry-down-down_ of our common ballads; and serve only
to assist the voice in forming sounds proper to be modulated into
melody, and to be lengthened or shortened according to the time and
measure of the tune. This rude form of vocal Music, as it is by far
the most simple and obvious, so it naturally would be the first and
earliest.
In the succession of ages it could not fail to occur, that in room of
those unmeaning or musical words, if I may call them so, might be
substituted words which expressed some sense or meaning, and of which
the pronunciation might coincide as exactly with the time and measure
of the tune, as that of the musical words had done before. Hence the
origin of Verse or Poetry. The Verse would for a long time be rude and
imperfect. When the meaning words fell short of the measure required,
they would frequently be eked out with the unmeaning ones, as is
sometimes done in our common ballads. When the public ear came to be
so refined as to reject, in all serious Poetry, the unmeaning words
altogether, there would still be a liberty assumed of altering and
corrupting, upon many occasions, the pronunciation of the meaning
ones, for the sake of accommodating them to the measure. The syllables
which composed them would, for this purpose, sometimes be improperly
lengthened, and sometimes improperly shortened; and though no
unmeaning words were made use of, yet an unmeaning syllable would
sometimes be stuck to the beginning, to the end, or into the middle of
a word. All these expedients we find frequently employed in the verses
even of Chaucer, the father of the English Poetry. Many ages might
pass away before verse was commonly composed with such correctness,
that the usual and proper pronunciation of the words alone, and
without any other artifice, subjected the voice to the observation of
a time and measure, of the same kind with the time and measure of the
science of Music.
The Verse would naturally express some sense which suited the grave or
gay, the joyous or melancholy humour of the tune which it was sung to;
being as it were blended and united with that tune, it would seem to
give sense and meaning to what otherwise might not appear to have any,
or at least any which could be clearly understood, without the
accompaniment of such an explication.
A pantomime dance may frequently answer the same purpose, and, by
representing some adventure in love or war, may seem to give sense and
meaning to a Music, which might not otherwise appear to have any. It
is more natural to mimic, by gestures and motions, the adventures of
common life, than to express them in Verse or Poetry. The thought
itself is more obvious, and the execution is much more easy. If this
mimicry was accompanied by Music, it would of its own accord, and
almost without any intention of doing so, accommodate, in some
measure, its different steps and movements to the time and measure of
the tune; especially if the same person both sung the tune {417} and
performed the mimicry, as is said to be frequently the case among the
savage nations of Africa and America. Pantomime Dancing might in this
manner serve to give a distinct sense and meaning to Music many ages
before the invention, or at least before the common use of Poetry. We
hear little, accordingly, of the Poetry of the savage nations who
inhabit Africa and America, but a great deal of their pantomime
dances.
Poetry, however, is capable of expressing many things fully and
distinctly, which Dancing either cannot represent at all, or can
represent but obscurely and imperfectly; such as the reasonings and
judgments, of the understanding; the ideas, fancies, and suspicions of
the imagination; the sentiments, emotions, and passions of the heart.
In the power of expressing a meaning with clearness and distinctness,
Dancing is superior to Music, and Poetry to Dancing.
Of those three Sister Arts, which originally, perhaps, went always
together, and which at all times go frequently together, there are two
which can subsist alone, and separate from their natural companions,
and one which cannot. In the distinct observation of what the ancients
called Rhythmus, of what we call Time and Measure, consists the
essence both of Dancing and of Poetry or Verse; or the
characteristical quality which distinguishes the former from all other
motion and action, and the latter from all other discourse. But,
concerning the proportion between those intervals and divisions of
duration which constitute what is called time and measure, the ear, it
would seem, can judge with much more precision than the eye; and
Poetry, in the same manner as Music, addresses itself to the ear,
whereas Dancing addresses itself to the eye. In Dancing, the rhythmus,
the proper proportion, the time and measure of its motions, cannot
distinctly be perceived, unless they are marked by the more distinct
time and measure of Music. It is otherwise in Poetry; no accompaniment
is necessary to mark the measure of good Verse. Music and Poetry,
therefore, can each of them subsist alone; Dancing always requires the
accompaniment of Music.
It is Instrumental Music which can best subsist apart, and separate
from both Poetry and Dancing. Vocal Music, though it may, and
frequently does, consist of notes which have no distinct sense or
meaning, yet naturally calls for the support of Poetry. But, 'Music,
married to immortal Verse,' as Milton says, or even to words of any
kind which have a distinct sense or meaning, is necessarily and
essentially imitative. Whatever be the meaning of those words, though,
like many of the songs of ancient Greece, as well as some of those of
more modern times, they may express merely some maxims of prudence and
morality, or may contain merely the simple narrative of some important
event, yet even in such didactic and historical songs there will still
be imitation; there will still be a thing of one kind, which by art is
made to {418} resemble a thing of a very different kind; there will
still be Music imitating discourse; there will still be Rhythmus and
Melody, shaped and fashioned into the form either of a good moral
counsel, or of an amusing and interesting story.
In this first species of imitation, which being essential to, is
therefore inseparable from, all such Vocal Music, there may be, and
there commonly is, added a second. The words may, and commonly do,
express the situation of some particular person, and all the
sentiments and passions which he feels from that situation. It is a
joyous companion who gives vent to the gaiety and mirth with which
wine, festivity, and good company inspire him. It is a lover who
complains, or hopes, or fears, or despairs. It is a generous man who
expresses either his gratitude for the favours, or his indignation at
the injuries, which may have been done to him. It is a warrior who
prepares himself to confront danger, and who provokes or desires his
enemy. It is a person in prosperity who humbly returns thanks for the
goodness, or one in affliction who with contrition implores the mercy
and forgiveness of that invisible Power to whom he looks up as the
Director of all the events of human life. The situation may
comprehend, not only one, but two, three, or more persons; it may
excite in them all either similar or opposite sentiments; what is a
subject of sorrow to one, being an occasion of joy and triumph to
another; and they may all express, sometimes separately and sometimes
together, the particular way in which each of them is affected, as in a
duo, trio, or a chorus.
All this it may, and it frequently has been said is unnatural; nothing
being more so, than to sing when we are anxious to persuade, or in
earnest to express any very serious purpose. But it should be
remembered, that to make a thing of one kind resemble another thing of
a very different kind, is the very circumstance which, in all the
Imitative Arts, constitutes the merits of imitation; and that to
shape, and as it were to bend, the measure and the melody of Music, so
as to imitate the tone and the language of counsel and conversation,
the accent and the style of emotion and passion, is to make a thing of
one kind resemble another thing of a very different kind.
The tone and the movements of Music, though naturally very different
from those of conversation and passion, may, however, be so managed as
to seem to resemble them. On account of the great disparity between
the imitating and the imitated object, the mind in this, as in the
other cases, cannot only be contented, but delighted, and even charmed
and transported, with such an imperfect resemblance as can be had.
Such imitative Music, therefore, when sung to words which explain and
determine its meaning, may frequently appear to be a very perfect
imitation. It is upon this account, that even the incomplete Music of
a recitative seems to express sometimes all the sedateness and
composure of serious but calm discourse, and sometimes all the {419}
exquisite sensibility of the most interesting passion. The more
complete Music of an air is still superior, and, in the imitation of
the more animated passions, has one great advantage over every sort of
discourse, whether Prose or Poetry, which is not sung to Music. In a
person who is either much depressed by grief or enlivened by joy, who
is strongly affected either with love or hatred, with gratitude or
resentment, with admiration or contempt, there is commonly one thought
or idea which dwells upon his mind, which continually haunts him,
which, when he has chased it away, immediately returns upon him, and
which in company makes him absent and inattentive. He can think but of
one object, and he cannot repeat to them that object so frequently as
it recurs upon him. He takes refuge in solitude, where he can with
freedom either indulge the extasy or give way to the agony of the
agreeable or disagreeable passion which agitates him; and where he can
repeat to himself, which he does sometimes mentally, and sometimes
even aloud, and almost always in the same words, the particular
thought which either delights or distresses him. Neither Prose nor
Poetry can venture to imitate those almost endless repetitions of
passion. They may describe them as I do now, but they dare not imitate
them; they would become most insufferably tiresome if they did. The
Music of a passionate air, not only may, but frequently does, imitate
them; and it never makes its way so directly or so irresistibly to the
heart as when it does so. It is upon this account that the words of an
air, especially of a passionate one, though they are seldom very long,
yet are scarce ever sung straight on to the end, like those of a
recitative; but are almost always broken into parts, which are
transposed and repeated again and again, according to the fancy or
judgment of the composer. It is by means of such repetitions only,
that Music can exert those peculiar powers of imitation which
distinguish it, and in which it excels all the other Imitative Arts.
Poetry and Eloquence, it has accordingly been often observed, produce
their effect always by a connected variety and succession of different
thoughts and ideas: but Music frequently produces its effects by a
repetition of the same idea; and the same sense expressed in the same,
or nearly the same, combination of sounds, though at first perhaps it
may make scarce any impression upon us, yet, by being repeated again
and again, it comes at last gradually, and by little and little, to
move, to agitate, and to transport us.
To these powers of imitating, Music naturally, or rather necessarily,
joins the happiest choice in the objects of its imitation. The
sentiments and passions which Music can best imitate are those which
unite and bind men together in society; the social, the decent, the
virtuous, the interesting and affecting, the amiable and agreeable,
the awful and respectable, the noble, elevating, and commanding
passions. Grief and distress are interesting and affecting; humanity
and compassion, joy and admiration, are amiable and agreeable;
devotion is awful {420} and respectable; the generous contempt of
danger, the honourable indignation at injustice, are noble, elevating,
and commanding. But it is these and such like passions which Music is
fittest for imitating, and which it in fact most frequently imitates.
They are, if I may say so, all Musical Passions; their natural tones
are all clear, distinct, and almost melodious; and they naturally
express themselves in a language which is distinguished by pauses at
regular, and almost equal, intervals; and which, upon that account,
can more easily be adapted to the regular returns of the correspondent
periods of a tune. The passions, on the contrary, which drive men from
one another, the unsocial, the hateful, the indecent, the vicious
passions, cannot easily be imitated by Music, The voice of furious
anger, for example, is harsh and discordant; its periods are all
irregular, sometimes very long and sometimes very short, and
distinguished by no regular pauses. The obscure and almost
inarticulate grumblings of black malice and envy, the screaming
outcries of dastardly fear, the hideous growlings of brutal and
implacable revenge, are all equally discordant. It is with difficulty
that Music can imitate any of those passions, and the Music which does
imitate them is not the most agreeable. A whole entertainment may
consist, without any impropriety, of the imitation of the social and
amiable passions. It would be a strange entertainment which consisted
altogether in the imitation of the odious and the vicious. A single
song expresses almost always some social, agreeable, or interesting
passion. In an opera the unsocial and disagreeable are sometimes
introduced, but it is rarely, and as discords are introduced into
harmony, to set off by their contrast the superior beauty of the
opposite passions. What Plato said of Virtue, that it was of all
beauties the brightest, may with some sort of truth be said of the
proper and natural objects of musical imitation. They are either the
sentiments and passions, in the exercise of which consist both the
glory and the happiness of human life, or they are those from which it
derives its most delicious pleasures, and most enlivening joys; or, at
the worst and the lowest, they are those by which it calls upon our
indulgence and compassionate assistance to its unavoidable weaknesses,
distresses, and misfortunes.
To the merit of its imitation and to that of its happy choice in the
objects which it imitates, the great merits of Statuary and Painting,
Music joins another peculiar and exquisite merit of its own. Statuary
and Painting cannot be said to add any new beauties of their own to
the beauties of Nature which they imitate; they may assemble a greater
number of those beauties, and group them in a more agreeable manner
than they are commonly, or perhaps ever, to be found in Nature. It may
perhaps be true, what the artists are so very fond of telling us, that
no woman ever equalled, in all the parts of her body, the beauty of
the Venus of Medicis, nor any man that of the Apollo of Belvidere. But
they must allow, surely, that there is no particular {421} beauty in
any part or feature of those two famous statues, which is not at least
equalled, if not much excelled, by what is to be found in many living
subjects. But Music, by arranging, and as it were bending to its own
time and measure, whatever sentiments and passions it expresses, not
only assembles and groups, as well as Statuary and Painting, the
different beauties of Nature which it imitates, but it clothes them,
besides, with a new and an exquisite beauty of its own; it clothes
them with melody and harmony, which, like a transparent mantle, far
from concealing any beauty, serve only to give a brighter colour, a
more enlivening lustre and a more engaging grace to every beauty which
they infold.
To these two different sorts of imitation,--to that general one, by
which Music is made to resemble discourse, and to that particular one,
by which it is made to express the sentiments and feelings with which
a particular situation inspires a particular person,--there is
frequently joined a third. The person who sings may join to this
double imitation of the singer the additional imitation of the actor;
and express, not only by the modulation and cadence of his voice, but
by his countenance, by his attitudes, by his gestures, and by his
motions, the sentiments and feelings of the person whose situation is
painted in the song. Even in private company, though a song may
sometimes perhaps be said to be well sung, it can never be said to be
well performed, unless the singer does something of this kind; and
there is no comparison between the effect of what is sung coldly from
a music-book at the end of a harpsichord, and of what is not only
sung, but acted with proper freedom, animation, and boldness. An opera
actor does no more than this; and an imitation which is so pleasing,
and which appears even so natural, in private society, ought not to
appear forced, unnatural, or disagreeable upon the stage.
In a good opera actor, not only the modulations and pauses of his
voice, but every motion and gesture, every variation, either in the
air of his head, or in the attitude of his body, correspond to the
time and measure of Music: they correspond to the expression of the
sentiment or passion which the Music imitates, and that expression
necessarily corresponds to this time and measure. Music is as it were
the soul which animates him, which informs every feature of his
countenance, and even directs every movement of his eyes. Like the
musical expression of a song, his action adds to the natural grace of
the sentiment or action which it imitates, a new and peculiar grace of
its own; the exquisite and engaging grace of those gestures and
motions, of those airs and attitudes which are directed by the
movement, by the time and measure of Music; this grace heightens and
enlivens that expression. Nothing can be more deeply affecting than
the interesting scenes of the serious opera, when to good Poetry and
good Music, to the Poetry of Metastasio and the Music of Pergolese, is
added the {422} execution of a good actor. In the serious opera,
indeed, the action is too often sacrificed to the Music; the castrati,
who perform the principal parts, being always the most insipid and
miserable actors. The sprightly airs of the comic opera are, in the
same manner, in the highest degree enlivening and diverting. Though
they do not make us laugh so loud as we sometimes do at the scenes of
the common comedy, they make us smile more frequently; and the
agreeable gaiety, the temperate joy, if I may call it so, with which
they inspire us, is not only an elegant, but a most delicious
pleasure. The deep distress and the great passions of tragedy are
capable of producing some effect, though it should be but
indifferently acted. It is not so with the lighter misfortunes and
less affecting situations of comedy: unless it is at least tolerably
acted, it is altogether insupportable. But the castrati are scarce
ever tolerable actors; they are accordingly seldom admitted to play in
the comic opera; which, being upon that account commonly better
performed than the serious, appears to many people the better
entertainment of the two.
The imitative powers of Instrumental are much inferior to those of
Vocal Music; its melodious but unmeaning and inarticulated sounds
cannot, like the articulations of the human voice, relate distinctly
the circumstances of any particular story, or describe the different
situations which those circumstances produced; or even express
clearly, and so as to be understood by every hearer, the various
sentiments and passions which the parties concerned felt from these
situations: even its imitation of other sounds, the objects which it
can certainly best imitate, is commonly so indistinct, that alone, and
without any explication, it might not readily suggest to us what was
the imitated object. The rocking of a cradle is supposed to be
imitated in that concerto of Correlli, which is said to have been
composed for the Nativity: but unless we were told beforehand, it
might not readily occur to us what it meant to imitate, or whether it
meant to imitate any thing at all; and this imitation (which, though
perhaps as successful as any other, is by no means the distinguished
beauty of that admired composition) might only appear to us a singular
and odd passage in Music. The ringing of bells and the singing of the
lark and nightingale are imitated in the symphony of Instrumental
Music which Mr. Handel has composed for the Allegro and Penseroso of
Milton: these are not only sounds but musical sounds, and may
therefore be supposed to be more within the compass of the powers of
musical imitation. It is accordingly universally acknowledged, that in
these imitations this great master has been remarkably successful; and
yet, unless the verses of Milton explained the meaning of the Music,
it might not even in this case readily occur to us what it meant to
imitate, or whether it meant to imitate any thing at all. With the
explication of the words, indeed, the imitation appears, what it
certainly is, a very fine one; but without {423} that explication it
might perhaps appear only a singular passage, which had less
connexion either with what went before or with what came after it,
than any other in the Music.
Instrumental Music is said sometimes to imitate motion; but in reality
it only either imitates the particular sounds which accompany certain
motions, or it produces sounds of which the time and measure bear some
correspondence to the variations, to the pauses and interruptions, to
the successive accelerations and retardations of the motion which it
means to imitate: it is in this way that it sometimes attempts to
express the march and array of an army, the confusion and hurry of a
battle, &c. In all these cases, however, its imitation is so very
indistinct, that without the accompaniment of some other art, to
explain and interpret its meaning, it would be almost always
unintelligible; and we could scarce ever know with certainty, either
what it meant to imitate, or whether it meant to imitate any thing at
all.
In the imitative arts, though it is by no means necessary that the
imitating should so exactly resemble the imitated object, that the one
should sometimes be mistaken for the other, it is, however, necessary
that they should resemble at least so far, that the one should always
readily suggest the other. It would be a strange picture which
required an inscription at the foot to tell us, not only what
particular person it meant to represent, but whether it meant to
represent a man or a horse, or whether it meant to be a picture at
all, and to represent any thing. The imitations of instrumental Music
may, in some respects, be said to resemble such pictures. There is,
however, this very essential difference between them, that the picture
would not be much mended by the inscription; whereas, by what may be
considered as very little more than such an inscription, instrumental
Music, though it cannot always even then, perhaps, be said properly to
imitate, may, however, produce all the effects of the finest and most
perfect imitation. In order to explain how this is brought about, it
will not be necessary to descend into any great depth of philosophical
speculation.
That train of thoughts and ideas which is continually passing through
the mind does not always move on with, the same pace, if I may say so,
or with the same order and connection. When we are gay and cheerful,
its motion is brisker and more lively, our thoughts succeed one
another more rapidly, and those which immediately follow one another
seem frequently either to have but little connection, or to be
connected rather by their opposition than by their mutual resemblance.
As in this wanton and playful disposition of mind we hate to dwell
long upon the same thought, so we do not much care to pursue
resembling thoughts; and the variety of contrast is more agreeable to
us than the sameness of resemblance. It is quite otherwise when we are
melancholy and desponding; we then frequently find ourselves haunted,
as it were, by some thought which we would gladly chase away, but
{424} which constantly pursues us, and which admits no followers,
attendants, or companions, but such as are of its own kindred and
complexion. A slow succession of resembling or closely connected
thoughts is the characteristic of this disposition of mind; a quick
succession of thoughts, frequently contrasted and in general very
slightly connected, is the characteristic of the other. What may be
called the natural state of the mind, the state in which we are
neither elated nor dejected, the state of sedateness, tranquillity,
and composure, holds a sort of middle place between those two opposite
extremes; our thoughts may succeed one another more slowly, and with a
more distinct connection, than in the one; but more quickly and with
a greater variety, than in the other.
Acute sounds are naturally gay, sprightly, and enlivening; grave
sounds solemn, awful, and melancholy. There seems too to be some
natural connection between acuteness in tune and quickness in time or
succession, as well as between gravity and slowness: an acute sound
seems to fly off more quickly than a grave one: the treble is more
cheerful than the bass; its notes likewise commonly succeed one
another more rapidly. But instrumental Music, by a proper arrangement,
by a quicker or slower succession of acute and grave, of resembling
and contrasted sounds, can not only accommodate itself to the gay, the
sedate, or the melancholy mood; but if the mind is so far vacant as
not to be disturbed by any disorderly passion, it can, at least for
the moment, and to a certain degree, produce every possible
modification of each of those moods or dispositions. We all readily
distinguish the cheerful, the gay, and the sprightly Music, from the
melancholy, the plaintive, and the affecting; and both these from what
holds a sort of middle place between them, the sedate, the tranquil,
and the composing. And we are all sensible that, in the natural and
ordinary state of the mind, Music can, by a sort of incantation, sooth
and charm us into some degree of that particular mood or disposition
which accords with its own character and temper. In a concert of
instrumental Music the attention is engaged, with pleasure and
delight, to listen to a combination of the most agreeable and
melodious sounds, which follow one another, sometimes with a quicker,
and sometimes with a slower succession; and in which those that
immediately follow one another sometimes exactly or nearly resemble,
and sometimes contrast with one another in tune, in time, and in order
of arrangement. The mind being thus successively occupied by a train
of objects, of which the nature, succession, and connection
correspond, sometimes to the gay, sometimes to the tranquil, and
sometimes to the melancholy mood or disposition, it is itself
successively led into each of those moods or dispositions; and is thus
brought into a sort of harmony or concord with the Music which so
agreeably engages its attention.
{425} It is not, however, by imitation properly, that instrumental
Music produces this effect: instrumental Music does not imitate, as
vocal Music, as Painting, or as Dancing would imitate, a gay, a
sedate, or a melancholy person; it does not tell us, as any of those
other arts could tell us, a pleasant, a serious, or a melancholy
story. It is not, as in vocal Music, in Painting, or in Dancing, by
sympathy with the gaiety, the sedateness, or the melancholy and
distress of some other person, that instrumental Music soothes us into
each of these dispositions: it becomes itself a gay, a sedate, or a
melancholy object; and the mind naturally assumes the mood or
disposition which at the time corresponds to the object which engages
its attention. Whatever we feel from instrumental Music is an
original, and not a sympathetic feeling: it is our own gaiety,
sedateness, or melancholy; not the the reflected disposition of
another person.
When we follow the winding alleys of some happily situated and well
laid out garden, we are presented with a succession of landscapes,
which are sometimes gay, sometimes gloomy, and sometimes calm and
serene; if the mind is in its natural state, it suits itself to the
objects which successively present themselves, and varies in some
degree its mood and present humour with every variation of the scene.
It would be improper, however, to say that those scenes imitated the
gay, the calm, or the melancholy mood of the mind; they may produce in
their turn each of those moods, but they cannot imitate any of them.
Instrumental Music, in the same manner, though it can excite all those
different dispositions, cannot imitate any of them. There are no two
things in nature more perfectly disparate than sound and sentiment;
and it is impossible by any human power to fashion the one into any
thing that bears any real resemblance to the other.
This power of exciting and varying the different moods and
dispositions of the mind, which instrumental Music really possesses to
a very considerable degree, has been the principal source of its
reputation for those great imitative powers which have been ascribed
to it. 'Painting,' says an author, more capable of feeling strongly
than of analysing accurately, Mr. Rousseau of Geneva, 'Painting, which
presents its imitations, not to the imagination, but to the senses,
and to only one of the senses, can represent nothing besides the
objects of sight. Music, one might imagine, should be equally confined
to those of hearing. It imitates, however, every thing, even those
objects which are perceivable by sight only. By a delusion that seems
almost inconceivable, it can, as it were, put the eye into the ear;
and the greatest wonder, of an art which acts only by motion and
succession, is, that it can imitate rest and repose. Night, Sleep,
Solitude, and Silence are all within the compass of musical imitation.
Though all Nature should be asleep, the person who contemplates it is
awake; and the art of the musician consists in substituting, in the
room of an {426} image of what is not the object of hearing, that of
the movements which its presence would excite in the mind of the
spectator.'--That is, of the effects which it would produce upon his
mood and disposition. 'The musician (continues the same author) will
sometimes, not only agitate the waves of the sea, blow up the flames
of a conflagration, make the rain fall, the rivulets flow and swell
the torrents, but he will paint the horrors of a hideous desert,
darken the walls of a subterraneous dungeon, calm the tempest, restore
serenity and tranquillity to the air and the sky, and shed from the
orchestra a new freshness over the groves and the fields. He will not
directly represent any of these objects, but he will excite in the
mind the same movements which it would feel from seeing them.'
Upon this very eloquent description of Mr. Rousseau I must observe,
that without the accompaniment of the scenery and action of the opera,
without the assistance either of the scene-painter or of the poet, or
of both, the instrumental Music of the orchestra could produce none of
the effects which are here ascribed to it: and we could never know, we
could never even guess, which of the gay, melancholy, or tranquil
objects above mentioned it meant to represent to us; or whether it
meant to represent any of them, and not merely to entertain us with a
concert of gay, melancholy, or tranquil Music; or, as the ancients
called them, of the Diastaltic, of the Systaltic, or of the Middle
Music. With that accompaniment, indeed, though it cannot always even
then, perhaps, be said properly to imitate, yet by supporting the
imitation of some other art, it may produce all the same effects upon
us as if itself had imitated in the finest and most perfect manner.
Whatever be the object or situation which the scene-painter represents
upon the theatre, the Music of the orchestra, by disposing the mind to
the same sort of mood and temper which it would feel from the presence
of that object, or from sympathy with the person who was placed in
that situation, can greatly enhance the effect of that imitation: it
can accommodate itself to every diversity of scene. The melancholy of
the man who, upon some great occasion, only finds himself alone in the
darkness, the silence and solitude of the night, is very different
from that of one who, upon a like occasion, finds himself in the midst
of some dreary and inhospitable desert; and even in this situation his
feelings would not be the same as if he was shut up in a subterraneous
dungeon. The different degrees of precision with which the Music of
the orchestra can accommodate itself to each of those diversities,
must depend upon the taste, the sensibility, the fancy and imagination
of the composer: it may sometimes, perhaps, contribute to this
precision, that it should imitate, as well as it can, the sounds which
either naturally accompany, or which might be supposed to accompany,
the particular objects represented. The symphony in the French opera
of Alcyone, which imitated the violence of the winds and the dashing
of the waves, in the {427} tempest which was to drown Coix, is much
commended by cotemporary writers. That in the opera of Isse, which
imitated that murmuring in the leaves of the oaks of Dodona, which
might be supposed to precede the miraculous pronunciation of the
oracle: and that in the opera of Amadis, of which the dismal accents
imitated the sounds which might be supposed to accompany the opening
of the tomb of Ardari, before the apparition of the ghost of that
warrior, are still more celebrated. Instrumental Music, however,
without violating too much its own melody and harmony, can imitate but
imperfectly the sounds of natural objects, of which the greater part
have neither melody nor harmony. Great reserve, great discretion, and
a very nice discernment are requisite, in order to introduce with
propriety such imperfect imitations, either into Poetry or Music; when
repeated too often, when continued too long, they appear to be what
they really are, mere tricks, in which a very inferior artist, if he
will only give himself the trouble to attend to them, can easily equal
the greatest. I have seen a Latin translation of Mr. Pope's Ode on St.
Cecilia's Day, which in this respect very much excelled the original.
Such imitations are still easier in Music. Both in the one art and in
the other, the difficulty is not in making them as well as they are
capable of being made, but in knowing when and how far to make them at
all: but to be able to accommodate the temper and character of the
Music to every peculiarity of the scene and situation with such exact
precision, that the one shall produce the very same effect upon the
mind as the other, is not one of those tricks in which an inferior
artist can easily equal the greatest; it is an art which requires all
the judgment, knowledge, and invention of the most consummate master.
It is upon this art, and not upon its imperfect imitation, either of
real or imaginary sounds, that the great effects of instrumental Music
depend; such imitations ought perhaps to be admitted only so far as
they may sometimes contribute to ascertain the meaning, and thereby to
enhance the effects of this art.
By endeavouring to extend the effects of scenery beyond what the
nature of the thing will admit of, it has been much abused; and in the
common, as well as in the musical drama, many imitations have been
attempted, which, after the first and second time we have seen them,
necessarily appear ridiculous: such are, the Thunder rumbling from the
Mustard-bowl, and the Snow of Paper and thick Hail of Pease, so finely
exposed by Mr. Pope. Such imitations resemble those of painted
Statuary; they may surprise at first, but they disgust ever after, and
appear evidently such simple and easy tricks as are fit only for the
amusement of children and their nurses at a puppet-show. The thunder
of either theatre ought certainly never to be louder than that which
the orchestra is capable of producing; and their most dreadful
tempests ought never to exceed what the scene painter is capable of
representing. In such imitations there may be an art which merits
{428} some degree of esteem and admiration. In the other there can be
none which merits any.
This abuse of scenery has both subsisted much longer, and been carried
to a much greater degree of extravagance, in the musical than in the
common drama. In France it has been long banished from the latter; but
it still continues, not only to be tolerated, but to be admired and
applauded in the former. In the French operas, not only thunder and
lightning, storms and tempests, are commonly represented in the
ridiculous manner above mentioned, but all the marvellous, all the
supernatural of Epic Poetry, all the metamorphoses of Mythology, all
the wonders of Witchcraft and Magic, every thing that is most unfit to
be represented upon the stage, are every day exhibited with the most
complete approbation and applause of that ingenious nation. The music
of the orchestra producing upon the audience nearly the same effect
which a better and more artful imitation would produce, hinders them
from feeling, at least in its full force, the ridicule of those
childish and awkward imitations which necessarily abound in that
extravagant scenery. And in reality such imitations, though no doubt
ridiculous every where, yet certainly appear somewhat less so in the
musical than they would in the common drama. The Italian opera, before
it was reformed by Apostolo, Zeno, and Metastasio, was in this respect
equally extravagant, and was upon that account the subject of the
agreeable raillery of Mr. Addison in several different papers of the
Spectator. Even since that reformation it still continues to be a
rule, that the scene should change at least with every act; and the
unity of place never was a more sacred law in the common drama, than
the violation of it has become in the musical: the latter seems in
reality to require both a more picturesque and a more varied scenery,
than is at all necessary for the former. In an opera, as the Music
supports the effect of the scenery, so the scenery often serves to
determine the character, and to explain the meaning of the Music; it
ought to vary therefore as that character varies. The pleasure of an
opera, besides, is in its nature more a sensual pleasure, than that of
a common comedy or tragedy; the latter produce their effect
principally by means of the imagination: in the closet, accordingly,
their effect is not much inferior to what it is upon the stage. But
the effect of an opera is seldom very great in the closet; it
addresses itself more to the external senses, and as it soothes the
ear by its melody and harmony, so we feel that it ought to dazzle the
eye with the splendour of its scenery.
In an opera the instrumental Music of the orchestra supports the
imitation both of the poet and of the actor, as well as of the
scene-painter. The overture disposes the mind to that mood which fits
it for the opening of the piece. The Music between the acts keeps up
the impression which the foregoing had made, and prepares us for that
which the following is to make. When the orchestra interrupts, as it
{429} frequently does, either the recitative or the air, it is in
order either to enforce the effect of what had gone before, or to put
the mind in the mood which fits it for hearing what is to come after.
Both in the recitatives and in the airs it accompanies and directs the
voice, and often brings it back to the proper tone and modulation,
when it is upon the point of wandering away from them; and the
correctness of the best vocal Music is owing in a great measure to the
guidance of instrumental; though in all these cases it supports the
imitation of another art, yet in all of them it may be said rather to
diminish than to increase the resemblance between the imitating and
the imitated object. Nothing can be more unlike to what really passes
in the world, than that persons engaged in the most interesting
situations, both of public and private life, in sorrow, in
disappointment, in distress, in despair, should, in all that they say
and do, be constantly accompanied with a fine concert of instrumental
Music. Were we to reflect upon it, such accompaniment must in all
cases diminish the probability of the action, and render the
representation still less like nature than it otherwise would be. It
is not by imitation, therefore, that instrumental Music supports and
enforces the imitations of the other arts; but it is by producing upon
the mind, in consequence of other powers, the same sort of effect
which the most exact imitation of nature, which the most perfect
observation of probability, could produce. To produce this effect is,
in such entertainments, the sole end and purpose of that imitation and
observation. If it can be equally well produced by other means, this
end and purpose may be equally well answered.
But if instrumental Music can seldom be said to be properly imitative,
even when it is employed to support the imitation of some other art,
it is commonly still less so when it is employed alone. Why should it
embarrass its melody and harmony, or constrain its time and measure,
by attempting an imitation which, without the accompaniment of some
other art to explain and interpret its meaning, nobody is likely to
understand? In the most approved instrumental Music, accordingly, in
the overtures of Handel and the concertos of Correlli, there is little
or no imitation, and where there is any, it is the source of but a
very small part of the merit of those compositions. Without any
imitation, instrumental Music can produce very considerable effects;
though its powers over the heart and affections are, no doubt, much
inferior to those of vocal Music, it has, however, considerable
powers: by the sweetness of its sounds it awakens agreeably, and calls
upon the attention; by their connection and affinity it naturally
detains that attention, which follows easily a series of agreeable
sounds, which have all a certain relation both to a common,
fundamental, or leading note, called the key note; and to a certain
succession or combination of notes, called the song or composition. By
means of this relation each foregoing sound seems to introduce, and as
it were prepare the mind for the following: by its {430} rhythmus, by
its time and measure, it disposes that succession of sounds into a
certain arrangement, which renders the whole more easy to be
comprehended and remembered. Time and measure are to instrumental
Music what order and method are to discourse; they break it into
proper parts and divisions, by which we are enabled both to remember
better what is gone before, and frequently to foresee somewhat of what
is to come after; we frequently foresee the return of a period which
we know must correspond to another which we remember to have gone
before; and, according to the saying of an ancient philosopher and
musician, the enjoyment of Music arises partly from memory and partly
from foresight. When the measure, after having been continued so long
as to satisfy us, changes to another, that variety, which thus
disappoints, becomes more agreeable to us than the uniformity which
would have gratified our expectation: but without this order and
method we could remember very little of what had gone before, and we
could foresee still less of what was to come after; and the whole
enjoyment of Music would be equal to little more than the effect of
the particular sounds which rung in our ears at every particular
instant. By means of this order and method it is, during the progress
of the entertainment, equal to the effect of all that we remember, and
of all that we foresee; and at the conclusion of the entertainment, to
the combined and accumulated effect of all the different parts of
which the whole was composed.
A well-composed concerto of instrumental Music, by the number and
variety of the instruments, by the variety of the parts which are
performed by them, and the perfect concord or correspondence of all
these different parts; by the exact harmony or coincidence of all the
different sounds which are heard at the same time, and by that happy
variety of measure which regulates the succession of those which are
heard at different times, presents an object so agreeable, so great,
so various, and so interesting, that alone, and without suggesting any
other object, either by imitation or otherwise, it can occupy, and as
it were fill up, completely the whole capacity of the mind, so as to
leave no part of its attention vacant for thinking of any thing else.
In the contemplation of that immense variety of agreeable and
melodious sounds, arranged and digested, both in their coincidence and
in their succession, into so complete and regular a system, the mind
in reality enjoys not only a very great sensual, but a very high
intellectual pleasure, not unlike that which it derives from the
contemplation of a great system in any other science. A full concerto
of such instrumental Music, not only does not require, but it does not
admit of any accompaniment. A song or a dance, by demanding an
attention which we have not to spare, would disturb, instead of
heightening, the effect of the Music; they may often very properly
succeed, but they cannot accompany it. That music seldom means to tell
any particular story, or to imitate any {431} particular event, or in
general to suggest any particular object, distinct from that
combination of sounds of which itself is composed. Its meaning,
therefore, may be said to be complete in itself, and to require no
interpreters to explain it. What is called the subject of such Music
is merely, as has already been said, a certain leading combination of
notes, to which it frequently returns, and to which all its
digressions and variations bear a certain affinity. It is altogether
different from what is called the subject of a poem or a picture,
which is always something which is not either in the poem or in the
picture, or something distinct from that combination, either of words
on the one hand or of colours on the other, of which they are
respectively composed. The subject of a composition of instrumental
Music is part of that composition: the subject of a poem or picture is
part of neither.
The effect of instrumental Music upon the mind has been called its
expression. In the feeling it is frequently not unlike the effect of
what is called the expression of Painting, and is sometimes equally
interesting. But the effect of the expression of Painting arises
always from the thought of something which, though distinctly and
clearly suggested by the drawing and colouring of the picture, is
altogether different from that drawing and colouring. It arises
sometimes from sympathy with, sometimes from antipathy and aversion
to, the sentiments, emotions, and passions which the countenance, the
action, the air and attitude of the persons represented suggest. The
melody and harmony of instrumental Music, on the contrary, do not
distinctly and clearly suggest any thing that is different from that
melody and harmony. Whatever effect it produces is the immediate
effect of that melody and harmony, and not of something else which is
signified and suggested by them: they in fact signify and suggest
nothing. It may be proper to say that the complete art of painting,
the complete merit of a picture, is composed of three distinct arts or
merits; that of drawing, that of colouring, and that of expression.
But to say, as Mr. Addison does, that the complete art of a musician,
the complete merit of a piece of Music, is composed or made up of
three distinct arts or merits, that of melody, that of harmony, and
that of expression, is to say, that it is made up of melody and
harmony, and of the immediate and necessary effect of melody and
harmony: the division is by no means logical; expression in painting
is not the necessary effect either of good drawing or of good
colouring, or of both together; a picture may be both finely drawn and
finely coloured, and yet have very little expression: but that effect
upon the mind which is called expression in Music, is the immediate
and necessary effect of good melody. In the power of producing this
effect consists the essential characteristic which distinguishes such
melody from what is bad or indifferent. Harmony may enforce the effect
of good melody, but without good melody the most skilful harmony can
produce no effect which deserves the name {432} of expression; it can
do little more than fatigue and confound the ear. A painter may
possess, in a very eminent degree, the talents of drawing and
colouring, and yet possess that of expression in a very inferior
degree. Such a painter, too, may have great merit. In the judgment of
Du Piles, even the celebrated Titian was a painter of this kind. But
to say that a musician possessed the talents of melody and harmony in
a very eminent degree, and that of expression in a very inferior one,
would be to say, that in his works the cause was not followed by its
necessary and proportionable effect. A musician may be a very skilful
harmonist, and yet be defective in the talents of melody, air, and
expression; his songs may be dull and without effect. Such a musician
too may have a certain degree of merit, not unlike that of a man of
great learning, who wants fancy, taste, and invention.
Instrumental Music, therefore, though it may, no doubt, be considered
in some respects as an imitative art, is certainly less so than any
other which merits that appellation; it can imitate but a few objects,
and even these so imperfectly, that without the accompaniment of some
other art, its imitation is scarce ever intelligible: imitation is by
no means essential to it, and the principal effect it is capable of
producing arises from powers altogether different from those of
imitation.
-----
PART III.
THE imitative powers of Dancing are much superior to those of
instrumental Music, and are at least equal, perhaps superior, to those
of any other art. Like instrumental Music, however, it is not
necessarily or essentially imitative, and it can produce very
agreeable effects, without imitating any thing. In the greater part of
our common dances there is little or no imitation, and they consist
almost entirely of a succession of such steps, gestures, and motions,
regulated by the time and measure of Music, as either display
extraordinary grace or require extraordinary agility. Even some of our
dances, which are said to have been originally imitative, have, in the
way in which we practise them, almost ceased to be so. The minuet, in
which the woman, after passing and repassing the man several times,
first gives him up one hand, then the other, and then both hands, is
said to have been originally a Moorish dance, which emblematically
represented the passion of love. Many of my readers may have
frequently danced this dance, and, in the opinion of all who saw them,
with great grace and propriety, though neither they nor the spectators
once thought of the allegorical meaning which it originally intended
to express.
A certain measured, cadenced step, commonly called a dancing step,
which keeps time with, and as it were beats the measure of, the Music
which accompanies and directs it, is the essential characteristic
which {433} distinguishes a dance from every other sort of motion.
When the dancer, moving with a step of this kind, and observing this
time and measure, imitates either the ordinary or the more important
actions of human life, he shapes and fashions, as it were, a thing of
one kind, into the resemblance of another thing of a very different
kind: his art conquers the disparity which Nature has placed between
the imitating and the imitated object, and has upon that account some
degree of that sort of merit which belongs to all the imitative arts.
This disparity, indeed, is not so great as in some other of those
arts, nor consequently the merit of the imitation which conquers it.
Nobody would compare the merit of a good imitative dancer to that of a
good painter or statuary. The dancer, however, may have a very
considerable degree of merit, and his imitation perhaps may sometimes
be capable of giving us as much pleasure as that of either of the
other two artists. All the subjects, either of Statuary or of History
Painting, are within the compass of his imitative powers; and in
representing them, his art has even some advantage over both the other
two. Statuary and History Painting can represent but a single instant
of the action which they mean to imitate: the causes which prepared,
the consequences which followed, the situation of that single instant
are altogether beyond the compass of their imitation. A pantomime
dance can represent distinctly those causes and consequences; it is
not confined to the situation of a single instant; but, like Epic
Poetry, it can represent all the events of a long story, and exhibit a
long train and succession of connected and interesting situations. It
is capable therefore of affecting us much more than either Statuary or
Painting. The ancient Romans used to shed tears at the representations
of their pantomimes, as we do at that of the most interesting
tragedies; an effect which is altogether beyond the powers of Statuary
or Painting.
The ancient Greeks appear to have been a nation of dancers, and both
their common and their stage dances seem to have been all imitative.
The stage dances of the ancient Romans appear to have been equally so.
Among that grave people it was reckoned indecent to dance in private
societies; and they could therefore have no common dances; and among
both nations imitation seems to have been considered as essential to
dancing.
It is quite otherwise in modern times: though we have pantomime dances
upon the stage, yet the greater part even of our stage dances are not
pantomime, and cannot well be said to imitate any thing. The greater
part of our common dances either never were pantomime, or, with a very
few exceptions, have almost all ceased to be so.
This remarkable difference of character between the ancient and the
modern dances seems to be the natural effect of a correspondent
difference in that of the music, which has accompanied and directed
both the one and the other.
{434} In modern times we almost always dance to instrumental music,
which being itself not imitative, the greater part of the dances which
it directs, and as it were inspires, have ceased to be so. In ancient
times, on the contrary, they seem to have danced almost always to
vocal music; which being necessarily and essentially imitative, their
dances became so too. The ancients seem to have had little or nothing
of what is properly called instrumental music, or of music composed
not to be sung by the voice, but to be played upon instruments, and
both their wind and stringed instruments seem to have served only as
an accompaniment and direction to the voice.
In the country it frequently happens, that a company of young people
take a fancy to dance, though they have neither fiddler nor piper to
dance to. A lady undertakes to sing while the rest of the company
dance: in most cases she sings the notes only, without the words, and
then the voice being little more than a musical instrument, the dance
is performed in the usual way, without any imitation. But if she sings
the words, and if in those words there happens to be somewhat more
than ordinary spirit and humour, immediately all the company,
especially all the best dancers, and all those who dance most at their
ease, become more or less pantomimes, and by their gestures and
motions express, as well as they can, the meaning and story of the
song. This would be still more the case, if the same person both
danced and sung; a practice very common among the ancients: it
requires good lungs and a vigorous constitution; but with these
advantages and long practice, the very highest dances may be performed
in this manner. I have seen a Negro dance to his own song, the
war-dance of his own country, with such vehemence of action and
expression, that the whole company, gentlemen as well as ladies, got
up upon chairs and tables, to be as much as possible out of the way of
his fury. In the Greek language there are two verbs which both signify
to dance; each of which has its proper derivatives, signifying a dance
and a dancer. In the greater part of Greek authors, these two sets of
words, like all others which are nearly synonymous, are frequently
confounded, and used promiscuously. According to the best critics,
however, in strict propriety, one of these verbs signifies to dance
and sing at the same time, or to dance to one's own music. The other
to dance without singing, or to dance to the music of other people.
There is said too to be a correspondent difference in the
signification of their respective derivatives. In the choruses of the
ancient Greek tragedies, consisting sometimes of more than fifty
persons, some piped and some sung, but all danced, and danced to their
own music.
* * * * *
* * * * *
{435}
*** [_The following Observations were found among Mr._ SMITH'S
_Manuscripts, without any intimation whether they were intended as
part of this, or of a different Essay. As they appeared too valuable
to be suppressed, the Editors have annexed them to this Essay._]
_Of the Affinity between Music, Dancing, and Poetry._
IN the second part of the preceding Essay I have mentioned the
connection between the two arts of _Music_ and _Dancing_,
formed by the _Rhythmus_, as the ancients termed it, or, as we
call it, the tune or measure that equally regulates both.
It is not, however, every sort of step, gesture, or motion, of which
the correspondence with the tune or measure of Music will constitute a
Dance. It must be a step, gesture, or motion of a particular sort. In
a good opera-actor, not only the modulations and pauses of his voice,
but every motion and gesture, every variation, either in the air of
his head or in the attitude of his body, correspond to the time and
measure of Music. The best opera-actor, however, is not, according to
the language of any country in Europe, understood to dance, yet in the
performance of his part, he makes use of what is called the stage
step; but even this step is not understood to be a dancing step.
Though the eye of the most ordinary spectator readily distinguishes
between what is called a dancing step and any other step, gesture, or
motion, yet it may not perhaps be very easy to express what it is
which constitutes this distinction. To ascertain exactly the precise
limits at which the one species begins, and the other ends, or to give
an accurate definition of this very frivolous matter, might perhaps
require more thought and attention than the very small importance of
the subject may seem to deserve. Were I, however, to attempt to do
this, I should observe, that though in performing any ordinary
action--in walking, for example--from the one end of the room to the
other, a person may show both grace and agility, yet if he betrays the
least intention of showing either, he is sure of offending more or
less, and we never fail to accuse him of some degree of vanity and
affectation. In the performance of any such ordinary action, every
person wishes to appear to be solely occupied about the proper purpose
of the action: if he means to show either grace or agility, he is
careful to conceal that meaning, and he is very seldom successful in
doing so: he offends, however, just in proportion as he betrays it,
and he almost always betrays it. In Dancing, on the contrary, every
person professes, and avows, as it were, the intention of displaying
some degree either of grace or of agility, or of both. The display of
one, or other, or both of these qualities, is in reality the proper
purpose of the action; and there can never be any disagreeable vanity
or affectation in following {436} out the proper purpose of any
action. When we say of any particular person, that he gives himself
many affected airs and graces in Dancing, we mean either that he gives
himself airs and graces which are unsuitable to the nature of the
Dance, or that he executes awkwardly, perhaps exaggerates too much,
(the most common fault in Dancing,) the airs and graces which are
suitable to it. Every Dance is in reality a succession of airs and
graces of some kind or other, and of airs and graces which, if I may
say so, profess themselves to be such. The steps, gestures, and
motions which, as it were, avow the intention of exhibiting a
succession of such airs and graces, are the steps, the gestures, and
the motions which are peculiar to Dancing, and when these are
performed to the time and the measure of Music, they constitute what
is properly called a Dance.