ness, which does not make
some sort of approach towards infinity; which nothing can do whilst we
are able to perceive its bounds; but to see an object distinctly, and to
perceive its bounds, is one and the same thing. A clear idea is
therefore another name for a little idea. There is a passage in the book
of Job amazingly sublime, and this sublimity is principally due to the
terrible uncertainty of the thing described: _In thoughts from the
visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, fear came upon
me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit
passed before my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still_,
but I could not discern the form thereof; _an image was before mine
eyes; there was silence; and I heard a voice,--Shall mortal man be more
just than God?_ We are first prepared with the utmost solemnity for the
vision; we are first terrified, before we are let even into the obscure
cause of our emotion: but when this grand cause of terror makes its
appearance, what is it? Is it not wrapt up in the shades of its own
incomprehensible darkness, more awful, more striking, more terrible,
than the liveliest description, than the clearest painting, could
possibly represent it? When painters have attempted to give us clear
representations of these very fanciful and terrible ideas, they have, I
think, almost always failed; insomuch that I have been at a loss, in all
the pictures I have seen of hell, to determine whether the painter did
not intend something ludicrous. Several painters have handled a subject
of this kind, with a view of assembling as many horrid phantoms as their
imagination could suggest; but all the designs I have chanced to meet of
the temptations of St. Anthony were rather a sort of odd, wild
grotesques, than any thing capable of producing a serious passion. In
all these subjects poetry is very happy. Its apparitions, its chimeras,
its harpies, its allegorical figures, are grand and affecting; and
though Virgil's Fame and Homer's Discord are obscure, they are
magnificent figures. These figures in painting would be clear enough,
but I fear they might become ridiculous.

SECTION V.

POWER.

Besides those things which _directly_ suggest the idea of danger, and
those which produce a similar effect from a mechanical cause, I know of
nothing sublime, which is not some modification of power. And this
branch rises, as naturally as the other two branches, from terror, the