mendation from their practical applications. This is particularly true of the treatises of Le Sage, which are found in the appendix, on the method of the hypothesis and exclusion, with a short history of the last, which serves for an introduction to the second treatise. This method is nothing else than a species of induction, in which after a complete enumeration of particulars, and an exclusion of the impossible or improbable, we form a determinate experimental proposition.

ART. X. L' Imagination.

The Imagination; a Poem. By James Delille. Two vols. Paris, Michaux, 1806. Imported by Deconchy.

M. DELILLE informs us that he bestowed nine years on the composition of this poem. It was begun in 1785 and finished in 1794. Whatever therefore may be the merits of the piece itself, it certainly cannot justly be termed an hasty production. If excellence has not been attained, it must be imputed rather to the want of talent than the want of time. But the productions of genius are seldom of such tardy growth. Time is requisite to give them their last polish; and the precept of Horace nonumque prematur in annum,' was designed to enforce correctness rather than to restrain the rapidity of the original execution. A poem which is the work of ten years will usually be marked with many irregularities, corresponding with the vigour or lassitude, the indolence or animation,which the writer has experienced during the performance. Hence careful revision and diligent application of the file, lima labor,' will be necessary to give a proper consistency to the whole, and to produce at least an approximation to uniformity of excellence. In the poem of M. Delille we perceive no striking elevations, no stupendous soarings of genius; an insipid mediocrity pervades the whole; in which we meet neither with any very attractive beauty nor repulsive deformity. Like most of the other poets of his nation, he is diffuse and tame. His descriptions tire by prolixity, and his episodes are flat and dull. His pictures are not destitute of ornament, but the ornaments which they have, lose their effect by their number or frivolity. A compressed energy of thought and expression is necessary to excite the true feeling of grandeur and sublimity; but M. Delille is sure to reduce and diminish what might otherwise have been grand or sublime by the minutiae of his details. Even those parts of this work which might have been fabricated of solid gold, he beats APP. Vol. 9. K k

into such an impalpable tenuity, that we neither discerá the substance nor the lustre of the precious ore. Amplifica tion is a figure which when employed with moderation and with skill, forms one of the principal constituents of poetic excellence; but we may amplify till we cease to aggrandize, and till the feeble exertion to produce a giant generates only a dwarf. Poetry is nothing without imagery; but then it must be imagery that will interest, and it is not the multiplicity which excites the interest so much as the judicious selection of the parts and the tasty disposition of the whole. That poetry interests most which acts most powerfully on the sensations; but many writers miss this end by superfluity of exertion. They do not sufficiently study the climax of sensation, and consequently where they might leave impressions of delight, they go on till they enervate and tire. These remarks will be found very applicable to the poem of M. Delille, of which we do not ob ject to the plan so much as the execution. The subject itself is naturally rich beyond the power of exhaustion. What is there either in nature or in art which may not be comprehended in a poem on the imagination? It blends the illusions of sense with the realities of life; moral ideas with material forms; the world of spirits with every species of corporeal existence. Instead of presenting the reader with any extracts, which it would be difficult to render into English verse so as to preserve all the characteristic features of the original, we shall lay before him a compendious view of the contents, from which it may be seen how far the plan of M. Delille's poem agrees with that of Akenside and other writers, who have written either on the whole or on detached parts of the same subject.

FIRST CANTO.

Man in his Intellectual Relations.

Material objects make certain impressions on the senses; these impressions are engraven on the memory. It is in this vast receptacle of ideas that the imagination selects, colours, modifies and combines them at its pleasure. Dreams are the product of the imagination, which is active even in the repose of night; the action of the imagination in the creation and use of forms; travels from the moral to the physical, from the physical to the moral world, make one serve for the embellishment of the other. What it is in the different characters of objects which most vividly strikes the imagination; the effects produced on it by contrasts, oppositions, and relations more or less immediate; how it passes from one idea to another which appears the most remote. What degree of happiness a man may procure by the culture of his reason and his imagination. Historical episode adapted to the subject.

SECOND CANTO.

Influence of the imagination on happiness; the pleasures of illusion substituted for the pleasures of reality; the imagination disdains the present, approximates the past by memory, and the future by anticipation. The memory operates powerfully on the affections, produces regret, remorse, friendship, gratitude, hatred. Episode relative to the subject. The future still more vividly affects the imagination; hope and fear constitute the impulsion; its influence not only moral but physical; some happy results from such illusions; injurious or salutary effects of fear, avidity with which it seeks the prognostics of the future force; with which the imagination tends to avarice, to ambition, and to love. Episode relative to this passion.

THIRD CANTO.

Impression of exterior Objects.

Colours, forms, motions, grace, which result from their elegance and harmonys power and charm of modesty, power of novelty, its attractions and dangers, power of fashion, impression which is produced by the view of that which is beginning, and that which is ceasing to be, of infancy and old age. It is in our want of motion in which resides that charm of the most terrible spectacles of battles and volcanoes. What objects produce and support melancholy, sorrow, fear, and horror shades of distinction between these different affections, smiling objects, their definition, picture of some objects of this kind, effects of grandeur on the imagination, grandeur in the works of nature; forests, sea, mountains, grandeur of the heavens, man the master-piece of creation, and more vividly affecting the imagination than any other object from the impression of his sentiments, the eloquence of speech, of his gestures, and of countenance. A view of Marius disarming his assassin.

FOURTH CANTO.

Local Impressions.

Reciprocal effects of the imagination on places, and of places on' the imagination; influence of wild and cultivated spots, acting on us with a variety depending on the state of the mind and heart. With the physical power of places is joined the moral power which originates in our agreeable or mournful recollections. We are attached to places in which we were born or educated, in which we have been happy, which have been the scenes of courtship and of love, those even in which we have been unhappy, in which the ob jects of our affections and our regrets repose in the tomb. The antiquity of particular spots and the associated recollections, these places make a more lively impression in proportion as they recall more celebrated occurrences, the imagination is transported with the view of Athens and of Rome. Episode on Choiseul's travels in Greece; charm which is felt in those spots which have been conse crated by the inspirations of the muse, which have been the fa Toured residence of genius and talents. Impression produced by

dark places, by solitary wilds, by solitude and darkness united with a sense of danger, example of these impressions taken from a fact which happened in the catacombs of Rome.

FIFTH CANTO.

The Arts.

Hymn to beauty considered as the model of the arts. The beautiful idea of sculpture and of painting, care which the Grecian artists took to catch the most perfect forms of nature, and to compose a whole of many scattered tracts selected with taste and reproduced by genius, these artists have indeed often passed the boundaries of nature in order to attain a perfection to which nothing similar in nature could be found, the Apollo Belvedere, the Transfiguration by Raphael; music, dancing, architecture. Description of the dome of St. Peter's at Rome; poetry, its charms and consolations, its different species; comedy, tragedy, Moliere and Racine; the fable, La Fontaine, the Epopea; Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Ariosto, Tasso, Ovid, Voltaire. Eloquence, the force which it gives to useful truths, the superior sciences in respect to the ima gination, geometry, the mechanic arts, clock-making, printing navigation.

SIXTH CANTO.

Happiness and Morals.

Influence of the imagination on happiness at different periods of life; by what principles we ought to govern the imagination; sources of happiness, independence, labour, virtue in respect to the imagination, it sees the past embellished by what it has done, and the future by what it hopes. Happiness in respect to society, inconveniences of excessive confidence and distrust. Portrait of J. J. Rousseau. The imagination which exaggerates the pleasures, exaggerates also the pains of life; how we may arm the imagination against the fear of death, poverty and obscurity; resources which nature itself furnishes in order to teach us not to fear, assistance which may be derived from the perusal of the moralists, Horace, Rousseau, Fontenelle, Voltaire, Montaigne; necessity of determining the choice of books, by our age and our necessities; necessity of repressing the activity of the imagination in unfortunate circumstances; ingratitude, loss of fortune, of friends; in exile and captivity; necessity of employment in these different situations to dissipate chagrin and prevent the mind from tormenting itself, example of Pelisson.

SEVENTH CANTO.

Policy.

Insufficiency of laws and punishments to govern a people, means which the imagination has invented to supply the deficiency and inspire patriotism and obedience; power of ceremony, its politica! advantages, inconveniences and miseries produced by the neglect. Ceremonies and public festivals; respect paid to the dead among civilized and savage nations, its advantages to society, serves to connect successive generations by the ties of recollection and regret,

gives efficacy to the last will of the deceased; the festival of the dead; the resurrection, the recompense of the just; tribute of praise to M. Turgot. Rustic feasts designed for the recreation and the encouragement of labour: description of some of these festivals in different countries; triumphant feasts; description of Ro man triumphs; solemn trial of the kings of Egypt; national festivals of the Greeks; species of spectacles which may be exhibited in climates less favourable to such solemnities. Effects of monuments, their origin, progress; tombs; mausoleum of Marshal Saxe; politic contrivance of the ancients to exhibit the monuments of illustrious men as objects of emulation and lessons of virtue; profanation of the sepulchres of St. Denis; danger of lavishing ho nours without discrimination; medals, eluding, by the solidity of their materials and the facility of their preservation, the ravages of time. Of the costume of different states; miseries which have been occasioned by the neglect and contempt of costumes; power ef signs, the green and the red factions; the tricoloured cockade.

EIGHTH CANTO.
Religion.

Contemplation of the Supreme Being, the original source of all perfection; distance which our infirmity makes between us and the Divinity, want of a worship which may bring us more into contact with the idea of an avenging and remunerating God. Divers sources of the different worships which have been created by gra titude, fear, hope, interest and pride; the benefactors of their country a primary object in the worship of antiquity; vices and even crimes sometimes shared with the virtues the honours of public adoration: apotheosis of the Roman emperors; fear a more common source than gratitude of a great number of religious creeds; hideous forms which it bestows on the deities of its creation; wishes of the poet in favour of the Africans brought up in capricious and destructive superstitions; Indian divinities formed on the model. of the careless deities of Epicurus. Gods created by interest, feast of the Maldives consecrated to the winds by a people addicted to navigation. Influence of pride on some religious ceremonies; the ape worshipped in some countries on account of his resemblance to the human being; the Indians offering shavings to their gods because their hair is naturally curled. A craving for novelty gives birth to a great number of worships; the inventors of the arts of divination. Man invincibly propense to superstition; divine honours rendered to the vilest animals and even to inanimate beings; the worship paid to the Grand Lama; the people who, wanton in the creation of divinities; the desire of prying into futu rity, creating auspices, augurs, and all kinds of predictions; the Romans governed by the cries or flights of birds; superstition of the oracles tributary to pride and ambition. True origin of the union between the authority of the priest and of the magistrate; happy effects of this union; the different divinities of the antients trans