SECTION XII.

DIFFICULTY.

Another source of greatness is difficulty.[21] When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to effect it, the idea is grand.  Stonehenge, neither for disposition nor ornament, has anything admirable; but those huge rude masses of stone, set on end, and piled each on other, turn the mind on the immense force necessary for such a work.  Nay, the rudeness of the work increases this cause of grandeur, as it excludes the idea of art and contrivance; for dexterity produces another sort of effect, which is different enough from this.

SECTION XIII.

MAGNIFICENCE.

Magnificence is likewise a source of the sublime.  A great profusion of things, which are splendid or valuable in themselves, is magnificent.  The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view never fails to excite an idea of grandeur.  This cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately considered.  The number is certainly the cause.  The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence.  Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them.  This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity.  In works of art, this kind of grandeur which consists in multitude, is to be very cautiously admitted; because a profusion of excellent things is not to be attained, or with too much difficulty; and because in many cases this splendid confusion would destroy all use, which should be attended to in most of the works of art with the greatest care; besides, it is to be considered, that unless you can produce an appearance of infinity by your disorder, you will have disorder only without magnificence.  There are, however, a sort of fireworks, and some other things, that in this way succeed well, and are truly grand.  There are also many descriptions in the poets and orators, which owe their sublimity to a richness and profusion of images, in which the mind is so dazzled as to make it impossible to attend to that exact coherence and agreement of the allusions, which we should require on every other occasion.  I do not now remember a more striking example of this, than the description which is given of the king’s army in the play of Henry IV.:—­

              “All furnished, all in arms,
    All plumed like ostriches that with the wind
    Baited like eagles having lately bathed: 
    As full of spirit us the month of May,
    And gorgeous as the sun in midsummer,
    Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls. 
    I saw young Harry with his beaver on
    Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury;
    And vaulted with such ease into his seat,
    As if an angel dropped down from the clouds
    To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus.”