ry vulgar, but
acute genius, Thomas Paine, whom we may suppose destitute of all
delicacy and refinement, has conveyed to us a notion of the _sublime_,
as it is probably experienced by ordinary and uncultivated minds; and
even by acute and judicious ones, who are destitute of imagination. He
tells us that "the _sublime_ and the _ridiculous_ are often so nearly
related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above
the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous
makes the sublime again." May I venture to illustrate this opinion?
Would it not appear the ridiculous or burlesque to describe the sublime
revolution of the _Earth_ on her axle, round the _Sun_, by comparing it
with the action of a _top_ flogged by a boy? And yet some of the most
exquisite lines in Milton do this; the poet only alluding in his mind to
the _top_. The earth he describes, whether

----She from west her _silent course_ advance
With _inoffensive pace_ that _spinning sleeps_
On her _soft axle_, while she _paces even_.

Be this as it may! it has never I believe been remarked (to return to
Gray) that when he conceived the idea of the beard of his _Bard_, he had
in his mind the _language_ of Milton, who describes Azazel sublimely
unfurling

The imperial ensign, which full high advanced,
_Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind_.
_Par. Lost_, B. i. v. 535.

Very similar to Gray's

_Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air!_

Gray has been severely censured by Johnson for the expression,

Give _ample room and verge enough_,
The characters of hell to trace.--_The Bard_.

On the authority of the most unpoetical of critics, we must still hear
that the poet _has no line so bad_.--"_ample room_" is feeble, but would
have passed unobserved in any other poem but in the poetry of Gray, who
has taught us to admit nothing but what is exquisite. "_Verge enough_"
is poetical, since it conveys a material image to the imagination. No
one appears to have detected the source from whence, probably, the
_whole line_ was derived. I am inclined to think it was from the
following passage in Dryden:

Let fortune empty her whole quiver on me,
I have a soul that, like an AMPLE SHIELD,
Can take in all, and VERGE ENOUGH for more!
Dryden's _Don Sebastian._

Gray in his Elegy has

Even in our ashes live their wonted f