“A faint shadow of uncertain light,
Like as a lamp, whose life doth fade away;
Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night
Doth show to him who walks in fear and great affright.”

SPENSER.

But light now appearing, and now leaving us, and so off and on, is even more terrible than total darkness; and a sort of uncertain sounds are, when the necessary dispositions concur, more alarming than a total silence.

SECTION XX.

THE CRIES OF ANIMALS.

Such sounds as imitate the natural inarticulate voices of men, or any animals in pain or danger, are capable of conveying great ideas; unless it be the well-known voice of some creature, on which we are used to look with contempt.  The angry tones of wild beasts are equally capable of causing a great and awful sensation.

    Hinc exaudiri gemitus, iraeque leonum
    Vincia recusantum, et sera sub nocte rudentum;
    Setigerique sues, atque in praesepibus ursi
    Saevire; et formae magnorum ululare luporam.

It might seem that those modulations of sound carry some connection with the nature of the things they represent, and are not merely arbitrary; because the natural cries of all animals, even of those animals with whom we have not been acquainted, never fail to make themselves sufficiently understood; this cannot be said of language.  The modifications of sound, which may be productive of the sublime, are almost infinite.  Those I have mentioned are only a few instances to show on what principles they are all built.

SECTION XXI.

SMELL AND TASTE.—­BITTERS AND STENCHES.

Smells and tastes have some share too in ideas of greatness; but it is a small one, weak in its nature, and confined in its operations.  I shall only observe that no smells or tastes can produce a grand sensation, except excessive bitters, and intolerable stenches.  It is true that these affections of the smell and taste, when they are in their full force, and lean directly upon the sensory, are simply painful, and accompanied with no sort of delight; but when they are moderated, as in a description or narrative, they become sources of the sublime, as genuine as any other, and upon the very same principle of a moderated pain.  “A cup of bitterness”; “to drain the bitter cup of fortune”; “the bitter apples of Sodom”; these are all ideas suitable to a sublime description.  Nor is this passage of Virgil without sublimity, where the stench of the vapor in Albunea conspires so happily with the sacred horror and gloominess of that prophetic forest: 

    At rex sollicitus monstris oracula Fauni
    Fatidici genitoris adit, lucosque sub alta
    Consulit Albunea, nemorum quae maxima sacro
    Fonte sonat; saevamque exhalat opaca Mephitim.

In the sixth book, and in a very sublime description, the poisonous exhalation of Acheron is not forgotten, nor does it at all disagree with the other images amongst which it is introduced: