Thus in the paper on Jealousy (No. 171) it wrote the English verse translation added to the quotation from Horace’s Ode I. xiii.  The MS. shows with how much care Addison revised and corrected the first draught of his papers, especially where, as in the series of eleven upon Imagination here commenced, he meant to put out all his strength.  In Blair’s Rhetoric four Lectures (20-23) are given to a critical Examination of the Style of Mr. Addison in Nos. 411, 412, 413, and 414 of the Spectator.  Akenside’s poem on the Pleasures of the Imagination, published in 1744, when he was 23 years old, was suggested by these papers.  Many disquisitions upon Taste were written towards the close of the last century.  They formed a new province in literature, of which Addison here appears as the founder and first lawgiver.]

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No. 412.  Monday, June 23, 1712.  Addison.

  ‘—­Divisum sic breve fiet Opus.’

  Mart.

I shall first consider those Pleasures of the Imagination, which arise from the actual View and Survey of outward Objects:  And these, I think, all proceed from the Sight of what is Great, Uncommon, or Beautiful.  There may, indeed, be something so terrible or offensive, that the Horror or Loathsomeness of an Object may over-bear the Pleasure which results from its Greatness, Novelty, or Beauty; but still there will be such a Mixture of Delight in the very Disgust it gives us, as any of these three Qualifications are most conspicuous and prevailing.

By Greatness, I do not only mean the Bulk of any single Object, but the Largeness of a whole View, considered as one entire Piece.  Such are the Prospects of an open Champain Country, a vast uncultivated Desart, of huge Heaps of Mountains, high Rocks and Precipices, or a wide Expanse of Waters, where we are not struck with the Novelty or Beauty of the Sight, but with that rude kind of Magnificence which appears in many of these stupendous Works of Nature.  Our Imagination loves to be filled with an Object, or to grasp at any thing that is too big for its Capacity.  We are flung into a pleasing Astonishment at such unbounded Views, and feel a delightful Stillness and Amazement in the Soul at the Apprehension[s] of them.  The Mind of Man naturally hates every thing that looks like a Restraint upon it, and is apt to fancy it self under a sort of Confinement, when the Sight is pent up in a narrow Compass, and shortned on every side by the Neighbourhood of Walls or Mountains.  On the contrary, a spacious Horizon is an Image of Liberty, where the Eye has Room to range abroad, to expatiate at large on the Immensity of its Views, and to lose it self amidst the Variety of Objects that offer themselves to its Observation.  Such wide and undetermined Prospects are as pleasing to the Fancy, as the Speculations of Eternity or Infinitude are to the Understanding.  But if there be a Beauty or Uncommonness joined with this Grandeur, as in a troubled Ocean, a Heaven adorned with Stars and Meteors, or a spacious Landskip cut out into Rivers, Woods, Rocks, and Meadows, the Pleasure still grows upon us, as it rises from more than a single Principle.