CHAPTER SECOND.

PROGRESSIVE GENERALIZATIONS OF THE WORD BEAUTY, RESULTING FROM THE NATURAL PROGRESS OF THE MIND.-BEAUTY, OF COLORS-OF FORMS-OF MOTION.COMBINATIONS OF THESE.-UNIFORMITY WORKS OF ART.-BEAUTY OF NATURE.

IN

NOTWITHSTANDING the great variety of qualities, physical, intellectual, and moral, to which the word beauty is applicable, I believe it will be admitted, that, in its primitive and most general acceptation, it refers to objects of sight. As the epithets sweet and delicious literally denote what is pleasing to the palate, and harmonious what is pleasing to the ear; as the epithets soft and warm denote certain qualities that are pleasing in objects of touch or of feeling;-so the epithet beautiful literally denotes what is pleasing to the eye. All these epithets, too, it is worthy of remark, are applied transitively to the perceptions of other senses. We speak of sweet and of soft sounds; of warm, of delicious, and of harmonious coloring, with as little impropriety, as of a beautiful voice, or of a beautiful piece of music. Mr. Burke, himself, has somewhere spoken of the soft green of the soul. If the transitive applications of the word beauty be more numerous and more heterogeneous than those of the words sweetness, softness, and harmony, is it not probable that some account of this peculiarity may be derived from the comparative multiplicity of those perceptions of which the eye is the common organ? Such, accordingly, is the very simple principle on which the following speculations proceed; and which it is the chief aim of these speculations to establish. In prosecuting the subject, however, I shall not fetter myself by any regular plan, but shall readily give way to whatever discussions may naturally arise, either from my own conclusions, or from the remarks I may be led to offer on the theories of others.

The first ideas of beauty formed by the mind, are, in all probability, derived from colors.* Long before in

It is, accordingly, upon this assumption that I proceed in tracing the progressive

fants receive any pleasures from the beauties of form or of motion, (both of which require, for their perception, a certain effort of attention and of thought) their eye may be caught and delighted with brilliant coloring, or with splendid illumination. I am inclined, too, to suspect, that in the judgment of a peasant, this ingredient of beauty predominates over every other, even in his estimate of the perfections of the female form; * and, in the inanimate creation, there seems to be little else which he beholds with any rapture. It is, accordingly, from the effect produced by the rich painting of the clouds, when gilded by the setting sun, that Akenside infers the existence of the seeds of taste, where it is impossible to trace them to any hand but that of nature.

"Ask the swain

Who journeys homewards from a summer-day's
Long labor, why, forgetful of his toils,

And due repose, he loiters to behold

The sunshine gleaming, as through amber clouds,
O'er all the western sky; full soon, I ween,
His rude expression, and untutored airs,
Beyond the power of language, will unfold
The form of beauty smiling at his heart."

Nor is it only in the judgment of the infant or of the peasant, that colors rank high among the constituents of the beautiful. The spectacle alluded to by Akenside, in the foregoing lines, as it forms the most pleasing of any to the untutored mind, so it continues, after the experience of a life spent in the cultivation of taste, to retain its undiminished attractions: I should rather say, retains all its first attractions, heightened by many stronger ones of a moral nature.

generalizations of these ideas; but the intelligent reader will immediately perceive, that this supposition is not essentially necessary to my argument. Supposing the first ideas of beauty to be derived from forms, the general conclusions which I wish to establish would have been precisely the same. In the case of a blind man, whatever notions he attaches to the word beautiful (which I believe to be very different from ours) must necessarily originate in the perception of such forms or shapes as are agreeable to his sense of touch; combined, perhaps, with the grateful sensations connected with softness, smoothness, and warinth. If the view of the subject which has occurred to me be just, an easy explanation may be deduced from it, of the correct and consistent use of poetical language, in speaking of objects of sight, by such a writer as the late Dr. Blacklock.

The opinion of Shenstone, on a point of this sort, is of some weight. "It is probable," he observes, " that a clown would require more color in his Chloe's face than a courtier."

"HIM have we seen, the greenwood side along,
As o'er the heath we hied, our labor done,
Oft as the wood-lark piped his evening song,
With wishful eye pursue the setting sun."

Such is one of the characteristical features in a portrait, sketched for himself, by the exquisite pencil of Gray; presenting an interesting counterpart to what he has elsewhere said of the poetical visions which delighted his childhood.

"Oft before his infant eye would run Such forms as glitter in the muse's ray, With orient hues."

Among the several kinds of beauty," says Mr. Addison, "the eye takes most delight in colors. We nowhere meet with a more glorious or pleasing show in nature than what appears in the heavens, at the rising and setting of the sun, which is wholly made up of those different stains of light, that show themselves in clouds of a different situation. For this reason we find the poets, who are always addressing themselves to the imagination, borrowing more of their epithets from colors than from any other topic." *

From the admiration of colors, the eye gradually advances to that of forms; beginning first with such as are most obviously regular. Hence the pleasure which children, almost without exception, express, when they see gardens laid out after the Dutch manner; and hence the justness of the epithet childish or puerile, which is commonly employed to characterize this species of taste;-one of the earliest stages of its progress both in individuals and in nations.

When in addition to the pleasures connected with colors, external objects present those which arise from certain modifications of form, the same name will be naturally applied to both the causes of the mixed emotion. The emotion appears, in point of fact, to our consciousness, simple and uncompounded, no person being able to say, while it is felt, how much of the effect is to be ascribed to either cause, in preference to the

* Spectator, No. 412.

other; and it is the philosopher alone, who ever thinks of attempting, by a series of observations and experiments, to accomplish such an analysis. The following expressions of Virgil show how easily the fancy confounds these two ingredients of the beautiful under one common epithet. "Ederá formosior albá.” “O formose puer, nimium ne crede colori." That the adjective formosus originally referred to the beauty of form alone, is manifest from its etymology; and yet it would appear that, even to the correct taste of Virgil, it seemed no less applicable to the beauty of color.

In another passage the same epithet is employed, by the same poet, as the most comprehensive which the language afforded, to describe the countless charms of nature, in the most beautiful season of the year:

"Et nunc omnis ager, nunc omnis parturit arbos ;
Nunc frondent sylvæ, nunc formosissimus annus."

Similar remarks may be extended to the word beauty, when applied to motion, a species of beauty which may be considered as in part a modification of that of form; being perceived when a pleasing outline is thus sketched, or traced out, to the spectator's fancy. The beauty of motion has, however, beside this, a charm peculiar to itself; more particularly, when exhibited by an animated being; above all, when exhibited by an individual of our own species. In these cases, it produces that powerful effect, to the unknown cause of which we give the name of grace;-an effect which seems to depend, in no inconsiderable degree, on the additional interest which the pleasing form derives from its fugitive and evanescent existence; the memory dwelling fondly on the charm which has fled, while the eye is fascinated with the expectation of what is to follow. A fascination, somewhat analogous to this, is experienced when we look at the undulations of a flag streaming to the wind; -at the wreathings and convolutions of a column of smoke; or at the momentary beauties and splendors of fireworks amid the darkness of night. In the human figure, however, the enchanting power of graceful motion is probably owing chiefly to the living ex

pression which it exhibits ;-an expression ever renewed and ever varied,-of taste and of mental elegance. From the combination of these three elements (of colors, of forms, and of motion) what a variety of complicated results may be conceived! And in any one of these results, who can ascertain the respective share of each element in its production? Is it wonderful, then, that the word beauty, supposing it at first to have been applied to colors alone, should gradually and insensibly acquire a more extensive meaning?

In this enlargement, too, of the signification of the word, it is particularly worthy of remark, that it is not in consequence of the discovery of any quality belonging in common to colors, to forms, and to motion, considered abstractly, that the same word is now applied to them indiscriminately. They all indeed agree in this, that they give pleasure to the spectator; but there cannot, I think, be a doubt, that they please on principles essentially different; and that the tranference of the word beauty, from the first to the last, arises solely from their undistinguishable cooperation in producing the same agreeable effect, in consequence of their being all perceived by the same organ, and at the same instant.

It is not necessary for any of the purposes which I have at present in view, that I should attempt to investigate the principles on which colors, forms, or motion, give pleasure to the eye. With the greater part of Mr. Alison's remarks, on these qualities, I perfectly agree; although in the case of the first, I am disposed to ascribe more to the mere organic impression, independently of any association or expression whatever, than he seems willing to allow.

The opinion, however, we may adopt on this point is of little importance to the following argument, provided it be granted that each of these classes (comprehended under the generic term beautiful) ought, in a philosophical inquiry into the nature of Beauty, to form the object of a separate investigation; and that the sources of these pleasing effects should be traced in analytical detail, before we presume to decide how far they are susceptible of explanation from one general theory.