Part 6 (2/2)
LUCRET.]
”Warm as the sun-beam, pure as driven snows, The enamour'd G.o.d for young DIONE glows; Drops the still tear, with sweet attention sighs, And woos the G.o.ddess with adoring eyes; 190 Marks her white neck beneath the gauze's fold, Her ivory shoulders, and her locks of gold; Drinks with mute ecstacy the transient glow, Which warms and tints her bosom's rising snow.
With holy kisses wanders o'er her charms, And clasps the Beauty in Platonic arms; Or if the dewy hands of Sleep, unbid, O'er her blue eye-b.a.l.l.s close the lovely lid, Watches each nascent smile, and fleeting grace, That plays in day-dreams o'er her blus.h.i.+ng face; 200 Counts the fine mazes of the curls, that break Round her fair ear, and shade her damask cheek; Drinks the pure fragrance of her breath, and sips With tenderest touch the roses of her lips;-- O'er female hearts with chaste seduction reigns, And binds SOCIETY in silken chains.
IV. ”IF the wide eye the wavy lawns explores, The bending woodlands, or the winding sh.o.r.es, Hills, whose green sides with soft protuberance rise, Or the blue concave of the vaulted skies;-- 210 Or scans with nicer gaze the pearly swell Of spiral volutes round the twisted sh.e.l.l; Or undulating sweep, whose graceful turns Bound the smooth surface of Etrurian urns, When on fine forms the waving lines impress'd Give the nice curves, which swell the female breast; The countless joys the tender Mother pours Round the soft cradle of our infant hours, In lively trains of unextinct delight Rise in our bosoms _recognized by sight_; 220 Fond Fancy's eye recalls the form divine, And TASTE sits smiling upon Beauty's shrine.
[Footnote: _The wavy lawns_, l. 207. When the babe, soon after it is born into this cold world, is applied to its mother's bosom; its sense of perceiving warmth is first agreeably affected; next its sense of smell is delighted with the odour of her milk; then its taste is gratified by the flavour of it; afterwards the appet.i.tes of hunger and of thirst afford pleasure by the possession of their objects, and by the subsequent digestion of the aliment; and lastly, the sense of touch is delighted by the softness and smoothness of the milky fountain, the source of such variety of happiness.
All these various kinds of pleasure at length become a.s.sociated with the form of the mother's breast; which the infant embraces with its hands, presses with its lips, and watches with its eyes; and thus acquires more accurate ideas of the form of its mother's bosom, than of the odour and flavour or warmth, which it perceives by its other senses.
And hence at our maturer years, when any object of vision is presented to us, which by its waving or spiral lines bears any similitude to the form of the female bosom, whether it be found in a landscape with soft gradations of rising and descending surface, or in the forms of some antique vases, or in other works of the pencil or the chisel, we feel a general glow of delight, which seems to influence all our senses; and if the object be not too large, we experience an attraction to embrace it with our arms, and to salute it with our lips, as we did in our early infancy the bosom of our mother. And thus we find, according to the ingenious idea of Hogarth, that the waving lines of beauty were originally taken from the temple of Venus.]
”Where Egypt's pyramids gigantic stand, And stretch their shadows o'er the shuddering sand; Or where high rocks o'er ocean's das.h.i.+ng floods Wave high in air their panoply of woods; Admiring TASTE delights to stray beneath With eye uplifted, and forgets to breathe; Or, as aloft his daring footsteps climb, Crests their high summits with his arm sublime. 230
[Footnote: _With his arm sublime_, l. 230. Objects of taste have been generally divided into the beautiful, the sublime, and the new; and lately to these have been added the picturesque. The beautiful so well explained in Hogarth's a.n.a.lysis of beauty, consists of curved lines and smooth surfaces, as expressed in the preceding note; any object larger than usual, as a very large temple or a very large mountain, gives us the idea of sublimity; with which is often confounded the terrific, and the melancholic: what is now termed picturesque includes objects, which are princ.i.p.ally neither sublime nor beautiful, but which by their variety and intricacy joined with a due degree of regularity or uniformity convey to the mind an agreeable sentiment of novelty. Many other agreeable sentiments may be excited by visible objects, thus to the sublime and beautiful may be added the terrific, tragic, melancholic, artless, &c. while novelty superinduces a charm upon them all. See Additional Note XIII.]
”Where mouldering columns mark the lingering wreck Of Thebes, Palmyra, Babylon, Balbec; The prostrate obelisk, or shatter'd dome, Uprooted pedestal, and yawning tomb, On loitering steps reflective TASTE surveys With folded arms and sympathetic gaze; Charm'd with poetic Melancholy treads O'er ruin'd towns and desolated meads; Or rides sublime on Time's expanded wings, And views the fate of ever-changing things. 240
[Footnote: _Poetic melancholy treads_, l. 237. The pleasure arising from the contemplation of the ruins of ancient grandeur or of ancient happiness, and here termed poetic melancholy, arises from a combination of the painful idea of sorrow with the pleasurable idea of the grandeur or happiness of past times; and becomes very interesting to us by fixing our attention more strongly on that grandeur and happiness, as the pa.s.sion of Pity mentioned in the succeeding note is a combination of the painful idea of sorrow with the pleasurable one of beauty, or of virtue.]
”When Beauty's streaming eyes her woes express, Or Virtue braves unmerited distress; Love sighs in sympathy, with pain combined, And new-born Pity charms the kindred mind; The enamour'd Sorrow every cheek bedews, And TASTE impa.s.sion'd woos the tragic Muse.
[Footnote: _The tragic Muse_, l. 246. Why we are delighted with the scenical representations of Tragedy, which draw tears from our eyes, has been variously explained by different writers. The same distressful circ.u.mstance attending an ugly or wicked person affects us with grief or disgust; but when distress occurs to a beauteous or virtuous person, the pleasurable idea of beauty or of virtue becomes mixed with the painful one of sorrow and the pa.s.sion of Pity is produced, which is a combination of love or esteem with sorrow; and becomes highly interesting to us by fixing our attention more intensely on the beauteous or virtuous person.
Other distressful scenes have been supposed to give pleasure to the spectator from exciting a comparative idea of his own happiness, as when a s.h.i.+pwreck is viewed by a person safe on sh.o.r.e, as mentioned by Lucretius, L. 3. But these dreadful situations belong rather to the terrible, or the horrid, than to the tragic; and may be objects of curiosity from their novelty, but not of Taste, and must suggest much more pain than pleasure.]
”The rush-thatch'd cottage on the purple moor, Where ruddy children frolic round the door, The moss-grown antlers of the aged oak, The s.h.a.ggy locks that fringe the colt unbroke, 250 The bearded goat with nimble eyes, that glare Through the long tissue of his h.o.a.ry hair;-- As with quick foot he climbs some ruin'd wall, And crops the ivy, which prevents its fall;-- With rural charms the tranquil mind delight, And form a picture to the admiring sight.
While TASTE with pleasure bends his eye surprised In modern days at Nature unchastised.
[Footnote: _Nature unchastised_, l. 258. In cities or their vicinity, and even in the cultivated parts of the country we rarely see undisguised nature; the fields are ploughed, the meadows mown, the shrubs planted in rows for hedges, the trees deprived of their lower branches, and the animals, as horses, dogs, and sheep, are mutilated in respect to their tails or ears; such is the useful or ill-employed activity of mankind! all which alterations add to the formality of the soil, plants, trees, or animals; whence when natural objects are occasionally presented to us, as an uncultivated forest and its wild inhabitants, we are not only amused with greater variety of form, but are at the same time enchanted by the charm of novelty, which is a less degree of Surprise, already spoken of in note on l. 145 of this Canto.]
”The GENIUS-FORM, on silver slippers born, With fairer dew-drops gems the rising morn; 260 Sheds o'er meridian skies a softer light, And decks with brighter pearls the brow of night; With finer blush the vernal blossom glows, With sweeter breath enamour'd Zephyr blows, The limpid streams with gentler murmurs pa.s.s, And gayer colours tinge the watery gla.s.s, Charm'd round his steps along the enchanted groves Flit the fine forms of Beauties, Graces, Loves.
V. ”Alive, each moment of the transient hour, When Rest acc.u.mulates sensorial power, 270 The impatient Senses, goaded to contract, Forge new ideas, changing as they act; And, in long streams dissever'd, or concrete In countless tribes, the fleeting forms repeat.
Which rise excited in Volition's trains, Or link the sparkling rings of Fancy's chains; Or, as they flow from each translucent source, Pursue a.s.sociation's endless course.
[Footnote: _When rest acc.u.mulates_, l. 270. The acc.u.mulation of the spirit of animation, when those parts of the system rest, which are usually in motion, produces a disagreeable sensation. Whence the pain of cold and of hunger, and the irksomeness of a continued att.i.tude, and of an indolent life: and hence the propensity to action in those confined animals, which have been accustomed to activity, as is seen in the motions of a squirrel in a cage; which uses perpetual exertion to exhaust a part of its acc.u.mulated sensorial power. This is one source of our general propensity to action; another perhaps arises from our curiosity or expectation of novelty mentioned in the note on l. 145. of this canto.
But the immediate cause of our propensity to imitation above that of other animals arises from the greater facility, with which by the sense of touch we acquire the ideas of the outlines of objects, and afterwards in consequence by the sense of sight; this seems to have been observed by Aristotle, who calls man, ”the imitative animal;” see Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXII.]
”Hence when the inquiring hands with contact fine Trace on hard forms the circ.u.mscribing line; 280 Which then the language of the rolling eyes From distant scenes of earth and heaven supplies; Those clear ideas of the touch and sight Rouse the quick sense to anguish or delight; Whence the fine power of IMITATION springs, And apes the outlines of external things; With ceaseless action to the world imparts All moral virtues, languages, and arts.
First the charm'd Mind mechanic powers collects, Means for some end, and causes of effects; 290 Then learns from other Minds their joys and fears, Contagious smiles and sympathetic tears.
[Footnote: _All moral virtues_, l. 288. See the sequel of this canto l. 453 on sympathy; and l. 331 on language; and the subsequent lines on the arts of painting and architecture.]
”What one fine stimulated Sense discerns, Another Sense by IMITATION learns.-- So in the graceful dance the step sublime Learns from the ear the concordance of Time.
So, when the pen of some young artist prints Rec.u.mbent Nymphs in t.i.tIAN'S living tints; The glowing limb, fair cheek, and flowing hair, Respiring bosom, and seductive air, 300 He justly copies with enamour'd sigh From Beauty's image pictured on his eye.
[Footnote: _Another sense_, l. 294. As the part of the organs of touch or of sight, which is stimulated into action by a tangible or visible object, must resemble in figure at least the figure of that object, as it thus const.i.tutes an idea; it may be said to imitate the figure of that object; and thus imitation may be esteemed coeval with the existence both of man and other animals: but this would confound perception with imitation; which latter is better defined from the actions of one sense copying those of another.]
<script>