is great and uncommon, than what is ordinary and familiar, however useful. There are other masterly reflexions of this kind in the 33d and 34th Sections, which are only to be excelled by Mr. Addison's Essay on the Imagination. Whoever reads this part of Longinus, and that piece of Mr. Addison's with attention, will form notions of them both very much to their honour.

Yet telling us we were born to pursue what + is great, without informing us what is so, would avail but little. Longinus declares for a close and attentive examination of all things. Outsides and surfaces may be splendid and alluring, yet nothing be within deserving our applause. He that suffers himself to be dazzled with a gay and gaudy appearance, will be betrayed into admiration of what the wise contemn; his pursuits will be levelled at wealth, and power, and high rank in life, to the prejudice of his inward tranquillity, and perhaps the wreck of his virtue. The pageantry and pomp of life will be regarded by such a person as true honour and glory; and he will neglect the nobler acquisitions, which are more suited to the dignity of his nature, which alone can give merit to ambition, and centre in solid and substantial grandeur.

The

The mind is the source and standard of whatever can be considered as great and illustrious in any light. From this our actions and our words must flow, and by this must they be weighed. We must think well, before we can act or speak as we ought. And it is the inward vigor of the soul, though variously exerted, which forms the patriot, the philosopher, the orator, or the poet: this was the rise of an Alexander, a Socrates, a Demosthenes, and a Homer. Yet this inward vigor is chiefly owing to the bounty of nature, is cherished and improved by education, but cannot reach maturity without other concurrent causes, such as public liberty, and the strictest practice of virtue.

That the seeds of a great genius in any kind must be implanted within, and cherished and improved by education, are points in which the whole world agrees. But the importance of liberty in bringing it to perfection, may perhaps be more liable to debate. Longinus is clear on the affirmative side. He speaks feelingly, but with caution about it, because tyranny and oppression were triumphant at the time he wrote.

He avers, with a spirit of generous indignation, that slavery is the confinement of the soul,

soul, and a public dungeon*. On this he charges the suppression of genius and decay of the sublime. The condition of man is deplorable, when he dares not exert his abilities, and runs into imminent danger by saying or doing what he ought. Tyranny, erected on the ruins of liberty, lays an immediate restraint on the minds of vassals, so that the inborn fire of genius is quickly damped, and suffers at last a total extinction. This must always be a necessary consequence, when what ought to be the reward of an honourable ambition becomes the prey of knaves and flatterers. But the infection gradually spreads, and fear and avarice will bend those to it, whom nature formed for higher employments, and sink lofty orators into pompous flatterers. The truth of this remark will easily appear, if we compare Cicero speaking to Catiline, to the same Cicero pleading before Cæsar for Marcellus. That spirit of adulation, which prevailed so much in England about a century ago, lowered one of the greatest genius's that ever lived, and turned even the Lord Bacon into a sycophant. And this will be the case wherever power incroaches on the rights of mankind: a servile fear will clog and fetter

*Sect. XLIV.

every

every rising genius, will strike such an awe upon it in its tender and infant state, as will stick for ever after, and check its generous sallies. No one will write or speak well in such a situation, unless on subjects of mere amusement, and which cannot, by any indirect tendency, affect his masters. For how shall the vassal dare to talk sublimely on any point wherein his lord acts meanly?

But further, as despotic and unbridled power is generally obtained, so it is as often supported by unjustifiable methods. The splendid and ostentatious pageantry of those at the helm, gives rise to luxury and profuseness among the subjects. These are the fatal sources of dissolute manners, of degenerate sentiments, of infamy and want. As pleasure is supplied by money, no method, however mean, is omitted to procure the latter, because it leads to the enjoyment of the former. Men become corrupt and abject, their minds are enervated and insensible to shame. "The faculties of the soul (in the words of Longinus) will then grow stupid, their

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*

spirit will be lost, and good sense and ge"nius must lay in ruins, when the care and

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study of man is engaged about the mortal,

*Sect. XLIV.

"the

"the worthless part of himself, and he has "ceased to cultivate virtue, and polish his "nobler part, the soul."

The scope of our author's reflexions in the

latter part of the section is this; that genius can never exert itself or rise to sublimity, where virtue is neglected, and the morals are depraved. Cicero was of the same opinion before him, and Quinctilian has a whole chapter to prove that the great Orator must be a good Man. Men of the finest genius, who have hitherto appeared in the world, have been for the most part not very. defective in their morals, and less in their principles. I am sensible there are exceptions to this observation, but little to the credit of the persons, since their works become the severest satires on themselves, and the manifest opposition between their thought and practice detracts its weight from the one, and marks out the other for public abhorrence.

An inward grandeur of soul is the common centre, from whence every ray of sublimity, either in thought, or action, or discourse, is darted out. For all minds are no more of the same complexion, than all bodies of the same In the latter case, our eyes would meet only with the same uniformity of colour in every object: In the former, we should be

texture.

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