man may hear words without having any idea of the
things which they represent, and yet afterwards be capable of returning
them to others, combined in a new way, and with great propriety, energy,
and instruction. The first instance is that of Mr. Blacklock, a poet
blind from his birth. Few men blessed with the most perfect sight can
describe visual objects with more spirit and justness than this blind
man; which cannot possibly be attributed to his having a clearer
conception of the things he describes than is common to other persons.
Mr. Spence, in an elegant preface which he has written to the works of
this poet, reasons very ingeniously, and, I imagine, for the most part,
very rightly, upon the cause of this extraordinary phenomenon; but I
cannot altogether agree with him, that some improprieties in language
and thought, which occur in these poems, have arisen from the blind
poet's imperfect conception of visual objects, since such improprieties,
and much greater, may be found in writers even of a higher class than
Mr. Blacklock, and who, notwithstanding, possessed the faculty of seeing
in its full perfection. Here is a poet doubtless as much affected by his
own descriptions as any that reads them can be; and yet he is affected
with this strong enthusiasm by things of which he neither has, nor can
possibly have, any idea further than that of a bare sound: and why may
not those who read his works be affected in the same manner that he was;
with as little of any real ideas of the things described? The second
instance is of Mr. Saunderson, professor of mathematics in the
University of Cambridge. This learned man had acquired great knowledge
in natural philosophy, in astronomy, and whatever sciences depend upon
mathematical skill. What was the most extraordinary and the most to my
purpose, he gave excellent lectures upon light and colors; and this man
taught others the theory of those ideas which they had, and which he
himself undoubtedly had not. But it is probable that the words red,
blue, green, answered to him as well as the ideas of the colors
themselves; for the ideas of greater or lesser degrees of refrangibility
being applied to these words, and the blind man being instructed in what
other respects they were found to agree or to disagree, it was as easy
for him to reason upon the words as if he had been fully master of the
ideas. Indeed it must be owned he could make no new discoveries in the
way of experiment. He