The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface
• Key to Abbreviations and References
• Introduction
• 1.: The Manuscript
• 2.: The Lectures
• 3.: Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages
• 4.: Rhetoric and Literary Criticism
• 5.: System and Aesthetics
• Bibliographical Note
• Lectures On Rhetoric and Belles Lettres: Lecture 2D.
• Lecture 3D.: Of the Origin and Progress of Language 1
• Lecture 4tha
• Lecture 5. A
• Lecture 6.THA: Of What Is Called the Tropes and Figures of Speech. B
• Lecture. 7. A
• Lecture. 8. A
• Lecture. 9tha
• Lecture. 10tha
• Lecture. 11 a
• Lecture. 12.THA: Of Composition
• Lecture. 13 a
• | Lecture. 14 a
• Lecture 15tha
• Lecture. 16th. a
• Lecture XVII. A
• Lecture Xviii a
• Lecture. Xixth. a
• Lecture. XX.THA
• Lecture Xxist. a
• Lecture Xxiida
• Lecture Xxiiida
• Lecture Xxivtha
• Lecture XXV. A
• Lecture Xxvitha
• Lecture Xxvii a
• Lecture Xxviiitha
• Lecture Xxix a
• Lecture. Xxx a
• Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages,&c. &c.1
• Appendix 1 (see P. 32) the Bee, Or Literary Weekly Intelligencer, For Wednesday, May 11, 1791.
• Appendix 2 Table of Corresponding Passages

| Lecture. 14 ^a

Mr Smith.

Wednesday Decr. 22^d 1762

Having given some generall rules for the description of objects, I shall now proceed to give some particular rules for the description of different sorts of objects. These are indeed the former applied to particular cases, and are no more than common sense dictates to any man tho’ he had never heard there was such a rule.

Objects are either corporeal or incorporeal.—Corporeal objects are, again, either Naturall or Artificial. Natural objects may be considered as of two Sorts. Either 1^st Such as exist compleatly at the same time, or 2^d Such as subsist in a succession of incidents.

1^st. In describing such Natural ^b objects as exist altogether at the same moment as Prospects, it is not necessary that we should arrange the objects, but | 177 describe them in any order we find easiest. Milton does this in his Description of Paradise 1 and in his L’allegro and Il penseroso. When authors attempt to arrange the objects in such descriptions, the reader endeavours to arrange them in the ^c same manner in the idea he forms of the thing described, and is always at a loss to follow it out, as no words can convey an accurate idea of the arrangement of objects unless they be assisted by a Plan. {Such descriptions Require all the attention and Exertion of Mind which is required by a Mathematicall Demonstration} ^d . Pliny has given us a Description of his Villa 2 in this manner, with great minuteness. But notwithstanding his great exactness his commentators are not at all agreed with regard to the situation of the severall objects described, each has formed a different plan according to the way in which he arranged them in his mind. And I believe if any unprejudized | 178 person were to read the description he would form an arrangement ^e of the severall objects in his mind, different from what either of them has given us. {The later Sophists often make use of such descriptions as these. As Achilles Tatius ^f etc. They deal very much in description and tell you that on the Right hand was a wood, on the Left a rock and so on}

Mr Balzac ^g has in imitation of Pliny given us an account of his Villa and the ^h arrangement of the severall objects in it. 3 I believe that if it be Mr Balzacs ⁱ fate to be an ancient and have commentators, they won’t agree a whit better than Plinys have done. The Earl of Buckingham has given a very accurate description of his house and Gardens in a letter to Mr Pope. 4 Yet tho it be very exact and done in an extremely lively maner, any one who sees Buckingham house will find it very different from the idea he had formed from the de| 179scription.

When therefore we describe a naturall object which can be comprehended in one view we need not be at great pains with regard to the arangement as the reader will arrange them to himself in the manner which suits his taste best; and will not be perplex’d by the arrangement ^j we have given, which will never be sufficient without the assistance of a Plan to give a just notion of the Thing Described.

2^dIf the ^k Circumstances regarding the object to be described are not existent in the same moment, we should deliver them in the same succession as that ^l they existed in. As Virgill does in his Description of the Murrain. 5 This is evident otherwise the order would impose on the Reader.

| 180 3^dArtificial objects are either intirely the contrivance of men or they are made in imitation of the works of nature. In describing the former {I mean in Poetical descriptions} it is much better to follow the indirect than the Direct description. We form a much better idea of these works from the effects they have on the beholder than by any description of their severall parts. Mr Addison has described St Peters 6 at Rome in this manner, and we form a more distinct notion of the size and proportions <of> that Building from his account than if he had gone to describe each part and given us the most exact dimensions. {without a plan} ^m

4 On the other hand if the objects are imitations of nature they can not be described too minutely | 181 for it is in the exact Symetry and the stableness ⁿ of the severall parts that the excellence of such productions consist. Lucians description of Appelles’s ^o Painting 7 of the marriage of Alexander and Roxana is admirable in this way, he gives us a compleat notion of the whole piece. But if he had wrote ^p on purpose to describe that picture, and had not mentioned <it> only to illustrate another subject he would (as he himself hints) have entered much more minutely in to the severall parts and not only given us an account of the generall scheme of the piece, but of the chief Lines and Colouring of every figure in it.

5 Internall objects as passions and affections can be well described only by their effects; these again either internall | 182 or externall.—The best Rule that can <be> given in this head seems to be that if the passion is very violent and agitates the person to any high degree, the best method is to describe it by the externall effects it produces, and these ought to be enumerated pretty fully and in the most striking and expressive manner. {The Sentiments which a Violent Passion excites in the mind are too tumultuous and rapid for your description to keep pace with} ^q —On the other hand when the passion is less violent we must have recourse to the internall effects; the externall ones are not strong enough nor sufficiently remarkable to point out the state of the persons mind and ^r characterise the passion he feels.—The enumeration of circumstances also in this case should neither be very full nor very particular. One or two well chosen ^s often are more expressive than a greater number less striking.—Virgill has | 183 described the passion of Dido in the departure of Æneas in a very <different manner> ^t from that of Æneas on the same occasion. 8 Her ^u bitter anguish is admirably pointed ^v out by a great variety of circumstances all externall and very nicely chosen. The Grief of Æneas again as he does not seem to have been so deeply affected is expressed by a few well chosen circumstances, and these all internall. The Cause of the Passion may sometimes be ^w brought in to advantage but is seldom sufficient to characterise it without the addition of some of its effects.

Homer and Virgil both describe the Joy of Latona on seeing her daughter preferred to other Oreads, ^x by a single expression, and this ^y readily suggests the state of mind she was in.— | 184 We may here observe that Virgils description is somewhat more exact than ^a Homers. 9 That author barely says she ^b γεγηθεν ϕρηνα an expression he uses to denote any kind of joy, and often applies in a very different sense as when he says γεγηθεν δε ποιμην. Virgil again points out in a very delicate manner the kind of joy she fel<t>. Those nice and delicate emotions were either not greatly felt or not much attended to in ^c the age of the Greek Poet. ^z

6. In Describing naturall objects we should not introduce two circumstances the one of which is included in the other. {Such Circumstances as necessarily Suggest one another may bee called Synonymes} ^d The modern Sophists as Hercules Statius ^e and ^f Apuleius etc. are often guilty of this 10 . They will tell us that a man who leant forwards | 185 had one foot placed before another, if he leant his head to one Side [to one Side,] they tell us he leant his body to the other. ^g The latter of these circumstances is included in the other and would be easily conceived from it. They were probably led to this manner of description by seeing that those authors whose descriptions were most ^h admired followed it. But they did not consider that those authors described imitations of nature and not natural objects. This last species of writing was greatly <used> ⁱ in the time of Trajan and the Antonines; and in it as we observed before the excellency <is> in relating every particular, as it is in the exactness and symmetry of them that the excellence of the workmanship consists.

| 186 The Abbe du Bos 11 in his description of the Statue of the slave who discovered the conspiracy amongst the Romans, describes every particular attitude; But if he had been to describe the Posture of the Slave himself, he would have told us that he stood ^j listening to what he heard them talking of, but at the same time so as ^k to seem minding his work tho in reality he had given it up for that time.

7. We ought not only to avoid these circumstances that include one another which we may call synonymous circumstances but also those <that> are conterary to the nature of the object we would describe. Thus when a modern Poet ^l describes the appearance of a mountain to those | 187 who saw it at a distance from Sea, he tells us they saw it appear black, which could not be the real appearance of a mountain at a distance as it is tinged of a bluish white by the Colour of the atmosphere.—Those who think themselves bound to describe when they are very ill ^m qualified and know little of the object they would describe are most apt to fall into this error.

8. ⁿ It would appear needless to guard you against using ^o epithets that are contradictory or not applicable to the object, if we did not find that some of the Greatest English writers have fallen into it, in many places. Mr Pope frequently applies adjectives to | 188 substantives with which they can not at all agree, as when he speaks of the brown horror of the groves12

• {deepens the murmurs of the falling floods
• and shades a browner horror ore the Woods} ^p

Brown joined to horror conveys no idea at all.—Thomson is often guilty of this fault and Shakespeare almost continually.

[a]MS 13

[b]replaces Corporeal

[1 ]Paradise Lost. iv.205 ff. Cf. i.154 n.4 above.

[c]written over like

[d]Hand B

[2 ]Letters, V.6. For Achilles Tatius see i.184 n.10 below.

[e]different deleted; numbers written above confirm the changed order

[f]MS Statius; Hand A wrote Hercules, Hand B substituted Achilles but left Statius; the next sentence is in Hand B

[g]Hand B’s correction of Blenac

[h]sev deleted

[3 ]Jean–Louis Guez de Balzac (1597–1654): Lettres (1624), I.xxxi, Sept. 1622, to Jacques de La Motte Aigron; I.15 in W. Tirwhyt’s English translation (1634).

[i]MS Blenacs

[4 ]John Sheffield Duke of Buckingham, Works (1723), ii.275–87, letter to the Duke of Shrewsbury of which Buckingham sent Pope a copy. Pope replied half–mockingly with an elaborate description of Stanton Harcourt where he was staying in the summer of 1718, and sent an almost identical fanciful account to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: printed in Pope’s Works (1737) and in The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. G. Sherburn (1956), i.505–11.

[j]replaces description

[k]Objects deleted

[l]replaces what

[5 ]Georgics, iii.478–566; cf. i.175 n.14 above.

[6 ]Remarks on several parts of Italy (1705; see Bohn edn of Works, i.417–18).

[m]Hand B

[n]first three letters overwritten and illegible: nobleness? But synonym of exactness is needed; see 185 foot

[o]Apelles added by Hand B in space left, ending ’s

[7 ]Not Apelles but Ac̈tion, whose most famous painting, the marriage of Alexander and Roxana, is discussed by Lucian in Herdotus or Ac̈tion, i.e. the virtues of historian versus the painter’s (LCL vi.141–52). Daniel Webb in An Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting: and into the Merits of the most celebrated Painters, ancient and modern (1760), 193–5, draws on Lucian in contrasting the boldness and novelty of ancient painters’ effects as contrasted with the clutter of minutiae in the work of the moderns.

[p]replaces been writing

[q]Hand B

[r]distinguish deleted

[s]ones deleted

[t]supplied conjecturally

[8 ]Aeneid, iv.362–87 and 333–61 respectively.

[u]violent Grief and deleted

[v]MS painted

[w]well deleted

[x]inserted by Hand B in blank left

[y]is alto deleted

[a]MS then

[9 ]Aeneid, i.502, ‘Latonæ tacitum pertemptant gaudia pectus’, based on Odyssey, vi.106 ( γέγηθε δέ τε ϕρένα Λητώ ); Iliad, viii.559 has the same phrase with ποιμήν.

[b]was deleted

[c]replaces by

[z]Homer deleted

[d]Hand B

[e]i.e. Achilles Tatius

[f]blank of fourteen letters in MS

[10 ]Achilles Tatius (who puzzled the scribe also at i.178 above) was the second–century ad author of the romance Leucippe and Cleitophon, remarkable for the minuteness of its descriptions of things and persons. His contemporary Apuleius wrote the satiric Golden Ass, based on Lucius the Ass, perhaps by Lucian.

[g]when deleted

[h]to be deleted

[i]supplied conjecturally

[11 ]Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture (1719), i.sec.38. Du Bos cites Livy, ii.4; Juvenal, viii.266. The figure is ‘le Rotateur ou l’Aiguiseur’, the Grinder. Thomas Nugent (1748 translation) quotes Juvenal in G. Stepney’s version.

[j]in the deleted

[k]not deleted

[l]modern Poet inserted by Hand B in blank left

[m]MS all

[n]MS 7

[o]circumsta deleted

[12 ]Eloisa to Abelard, 169–70 reads:

• Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
• And breathes a browner horror on the woods.

The phrase is borrowed from Dryden: ‘. . . the lambent easy light / Gild the brown horror, and dispel the night’ (The Hind and the Panther, 1230–1); ‘. . . a wood / Which thick with shades and a brown horror stood’ (Aeneid, vii.40–1). Cf. Pope, The First Book of Statius his Thebais (1712), 516: ‘Thro’ the brown Horrors of the Night he fled’. Thomson’s synaesthesia has already been criticised at i. v.68 above.

[p]Hand B