If I were to name a Poet that is a perfect Master in all these Arts of working on the Imagination, I think ‘Milton’ may pass for one:  And if his ‘Paradise Lost’ falls short of the ‘AEneid’ or ‘Iliad’ in this respect, it proceeds rather from the Fault of the Language in which it is written, than from any Defect of Genius in the Author.  So Divine a Poem in ‘English’, is like a stately Palace built of Brick, where one may see Architecture in as great a Perfection as in one of Marble, tho’ the Materials are of a coarser Nature.  But to consider it only as it regards our present Subject:  What can be conceived greater than the Battel of Angels, the Majesty of Messiah, the Stature and Behaviour of Satan and his Peers?  What more beautiful than ‘Pandaemonium’, Paradise, Heaven, Angels, ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’?  What more strange, than the Creation of the World, the several Metamorphoses of the fallen Angels, and the surprising Adventures their Leader meets with in his Search after Paradise?  No other Subject could have furnished a Poet with Scenes so proper to strike the Imagination, as no other Poet could have painted those Scenes in more strong and lively Colours.

O.

[Footnote 1:  [a Thousand]]

[Footnote 2:  [that]]

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No. 418.  Monday, June 30, 1712.  Addison.

  ‘—­ferat et rubus asper amomum.’

  Virg.

The Pleasures of these Secondary Views of the Imagination, are of a wider and more Universal Nature than those it has when joined with Sight; for not only what is Great, Strange or Beautiful, but any Thing that is Disagreeable when looked upon, pleases us in an apt Description.  Here, therefore, we must enquire after a new Principle of Pleasure, which is nothing else but the Action of the Mind, which compares the Ideas that arise from Words, with the Ideas that arise from the Objects themselves; and why this Operation of the Mind is attended with so much Pleasure, we have before considered.  For this Reason therefore, the Description of a Dunghill is pleasing to the Imagination, if the Image be represented to our Minds by suitable Expressions; tho’ perhaps, this may be more properly called the Pleasure of the Understanding than of the Fancy, because we are not so much delighted with the Image that is contained in the Description, as with the Aptness of the Description to excite the Image.