rival and success our Tasso, not to mention our own Spenser, is an illustrious instance; who, though he has attacked the episodical structure of Ariosto's fable in theory, and rejected it in practice, has followed it in the boldness of its fictions with a closeness of imitation, that leaves us a convincing proof of his having regarded them with the common admiration of his countrymen.

I have chosen to insist particularly on the "Orlando Furioso," as the charges of violating truth and probability have been urged against the fictions of that poem with the greatest plausibility. If the reader will again acquiesce in our descending from the great examples so recently mentioned, we may have a more convincing and familiar proof of the principle which it is my object to illustrate. Some works of the marvellous kind, which have latterly acquired an extensive popularity, will probably set the matter in a clearer light, than any poetical work of the same description extant. I would be understood to mean those compositions which unite the fictions of the antient romance with the interest of the modern novel. These productions receive every benefit arising from a fair trial, as taking them up with no inten

tion of scrutinizing their critical merits or defects, we turn them over with feelings so far disengaged from other interests as to be susceptible of those impressions which they may be calculated to excite. From the insatiable avidity with which we are hurried through those wonderful descriptions in which the modern romance abounds, and from the extreme gratification with which we confess ourselves to be conveyed to that eventful moment, when the charm is dissolved, and our expectations answered, it may be surely inferred that our sense of the falsehood or improbability is not prominent in the pleasure we take in their wildness and marvellousness. Were this the case our inducement to proceed in the story would be irreconcileable with what we experience and admit to be the case: we should in fact lay down such works as finding less to delight than to displease us in continuing the perusal.

These considerations, strengthened by an exemplification so familiar as to give every reader a power of deciding for himself, appear to me to establish convincingly some points which were assumed without proof at the commencement of this defence of the

marvellous descriptions of poetry ;-that the sensations which we feel on being hurried through marvellous narrations are of a kind the most powerful and interesting; and that the mind which yields itself up to the influence of this imagery is too much transported to take account of the falsehood of those descriptions which work its illusion.

If we find it difficult to define the precise nature of these sensations, it amounts almost to a proof that they are the unallayed emotions of surprise and admiration. For the feelings with which we read those productions possess all the characteristick marks of these mental affections. They are emotions not only of that powerful nature which exclude the entrance into the mind of all weaker considerations, but of that captivating kind which contribute to interest while they delight us; a circumstance by which they seem to be particularly distinguished from other emotions. And they principally, if not exclusively among all the affections of the breast, may be wound up to such a degree of intenseness as will suspend the powers of recollection. While on the contrary the sense of falsehood or improbability having no connection with emotion or delight can

not be felt, and either become interesting, or cease to be remembered: forming of course no part of that impression which we receive from the perusal of such productions, they afford the fullest proof of the strength of that emotion in which they are involved, and by which they are overpowered; which is a quality that particularly characterizes the mental affections of surprise and admiration. It may be presumed, that there is not any person who, after he has read such productions, does not retain a conviction of having felt those contrary sensations, which I conceive to operate in opposite directions, and who if he could recall any thing of the particular manner in which he was affected, could not even point out certain parts which he admired, though he could not describe the exact nature of his sensations; and even specify particular passages where he ceased to be interested, from feeling the idea of their improbability preponderate over the pleasure they were otherwise calculated to excite.

If there is any reader who has felt the force of such sensations, yet entertains a doubt of what may be precisely their nature and appellation, they may be identified on

the authority of one, who possessed not less a correctness of judgment, than a sensibility of taste, and ascertained to be the emotions of surprise and admiration which I have declared in the beginning. "These descriptions," says Mr. Addison, on the fairy way of writing, "raise a pleasing kind of terror in the mind of the reader, and amuse his ima gination with the strangeness and novelty of the persons who are represented in them. We are pleased with surveying the different habits and behaviour of foreign countries, how much more must we be delighted and surprised, when we are led as it were into a new creation, and see the persons and manners of another species ?"

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And hence there appears to be a point established of no small importance in estimating the justness, and determining the perfections of fanciful imagery; for thus the end of marvellous poetry is not only ascertained, but its conformity to that pleasure which is the general end of the art is at once displayed; and shewn to possess as marked a character as that produced by tragick composition: marvellous poetry intending to

Spectator. No. 419.