on is perpetually repeated; otherwise the ear could not
determine instantly, whether the successions of sound were in common
or in triple time.

But besides these little circles of musical time, there are the
greater returning periods, and the still more distinct choruses;
which, like the rhimes at the end of verses, owe their beauty to
repetition; that is, to the facility and distinctness with which we
perceive sounds, which we expect to perceive or have perceived before;
or in the language of this work, to the greater ease and energy with
which our organ is excited by the combined sensorial powers of
association and irritation, than by the latter singly.

This kind of pleasure arising from repetition, that is from the
facility and distinctness with which we perceive and understand
repeated sensations, enters into all the agreeable arts; and when it
is carried to excess is termed formality. The art of dancing like that
of music depends for a great part of the pleasure, it affords, on
repetition; architecture, especially the Grecian, consists of one part
being a repetition of another, and hence the beauty of the pyramidal
outline in landscape-painting; where one side of the picture may be
said in some measure to balance the other. So universally does
repetition contribute to our pleasure in the fine arts, that beauty
itself has been defined by some writers to consist in a due
combination of uniformity and variety: Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXII.
2. 1.

Where these repetitions of form, and reiterations of colour, are
produced in a picture or a natural landscape, in an agreeable
quantity, it is termed simplicity, or unity of character; where the
repetition principally is seen in the disposition or locality of the
divisions, it is called symmetry, proportion, or grouping the separate
parts; where this repetition is most conspicuous in the forms of
visible objects, it is called regularity or uniformity; and where it
affects the colouring principally, the artists call it breadth of
colour.

There is nevertheless, an excess of the repetition of the same or
similar ideas, which ceases to please, and must therefore be excluded
from compositions of Taste in painted landscapes, or in ornamented
gardens; which is then called formality, monotony, or insipidity. Why
the excitation of ideas should give additional pleasure by the
facility and distinctness of their production for a certain time, and
then cease to give additional pl