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reader. This employs his faculties, and fets his imagination ftrongly and effectually at work. When an orator expreffes himself in such a manner as to make his hearers believe he could fay more, and when his known fituation makes it probable that he might have fufficient reafon, for pushing his argument no farther than he doth (as when a perfon fpeaks or writes in defence of new and obnoxious opinions) in this cafe, the imagination of the hearer will never fuggeft too little. That fuppreffion, joined with our concern to see a person, of whom we have conceived a favourable opinion, in a fituation which obliges him to conceal the truth, inflames the paflions more than any thing that could have been faid, though ever fo convincing and fatisfactory, upon the subject.

The circumftances in which Marc Antony delivered Cæfar's funeral oration, were peculiarly favourable to his views of exciting compaffion and refentment. Broken hints and filence would have a greater effect in his fituation, than speaking openly could have had in any other. For the fame reason it would, no doubt, be for the advantage of christianity, if unbelievers had nothing to fear from propofing all their objections to it in the most and public manner. In our prefent circumstances, infidelity is often fuccessfully propagated by infinuations, obfcure hints, and affected sneers; whereas, if all pretence for these artifices were cut off, by an unrestrained indul

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gence of free inquiry and debate, no other method could be found by which it could be fo conveniently propagated. In common life, is it not well known that scandal is always most effectually propagated by hints and whispers?

Let it, however, be remembered, as a caution against the improper use of this method of promoting any cause, that filence is ridiculous when no reason can be imagined, either from fear, modefty, tenderness, or any other caufe, why a perfon fhould not speak out.

Laftly, nothing more effectually conduces to gain belief, than the appearance of candour and impartiality in the orator, and his willingness to be convinced if he have fallen into an error. An opinion maintained with fo much modefty, by a perfon fo diffident of his own judgment, and who appears to have no motive to bias him in favour of falfehood, is fure to be attended to without prejudice. We cannot help sympathizing with such a fpeaker, and affuming his impartiality and candid difpofition.

We show our candour when we appear to be in doubt, and difcufs our own doubts; when we freely allow as much weight as poffible to the objections of our adverfaries; and particularly when we frankly retract what we acknowledge we had too haftily advanced; alfo when, feeming to forget our own particular fituation, as advocates for

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one fide of a queftion, we confult with our hearers, our judge, or our adverfaries, as if perfons on all fides were equally impartial, and intent upon finding out the truth. This is paying a compliment to our audience, and to our adversaries, which is generally returned with advantage. A decifion of a queftion, after fuch a candid and impartial difcuffion, hath the appearance of being the unanimous determination of all parties. It is no longer one party only that we are attending to, but we almost fancy fuch a candid opinion to be the result of the confultation of all perfons concerned.

In this cafe, the determination should be indeed impartial, and what every person, who hears it, will think it right that all parties fhould adopt.

We have a fine picture of doubt in Cicero's defence of Cluentius. "I know not which way "to turn myself," &c.; and a good example of an impartial and fair appeal to an adversary, in his accufation of Verres, "Now I defire your opi"nion," &c.; and again, in his defence of Rabirius, "What could you have done in such a "cafe?" &c.

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LECTURE XVII.

Of the PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION in general, and of the Standard of GOOD TASTE.

HAVING

AVING confidered a variety of the most important circumftances relating to the stronger paffions and emotions, the knowledge of which more eminently contributes to form a critic in works of taste and genius, and alfo thofe forms of address which are peculiarly adapted to gain assent; I come in the third place, according to the method I propofed, to enumerate those finer feelings which constitute the pleasures of the imagination, in order to ascertain the nature and kind of thofe refined pleasures: but, previous to this, I fhall make a few general obfervations relating to the whole of this part of our fubject.

The first circumftance I thall take notice of with regard to thofe exquifite feelings is, that the only inlets to them are, as Lord Kaims obferves, the eye and the ear, and that the other fenfes have nothing to do with them. Colours and founds, it is remarkable, are tranfmitted to the mind, or fenforium, without any fenfible intervention of the corporeal organs by which they are transmitted. The

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eye and the ear, when they are in a found and healthy ftate, are fo little affected by the impreffion of light, and the vibrations of the air, that were it not for internal evidence, we should not know that we had any fuch organs.

We find that when our eye-lids are closed, we cannot fee at all, and that we are obliged to turn our eyes towards any object before we can perceive it, or we should not readily discover what it is on which vifion depends. In like manner, it is eafy to conceive that a rational being, coming into the world with the perfect ufe of the sense of hearing, would not be able, without some experiment of the fame nature, to find out what part of his corporeal fyftem was the medium of those sensations: whereas we cannot feel, taste, or even smell, without being at the fame time sensible that fome part of the surface of our bodies is affected in the first of these cafes, and the tongue and nofe in the two laft.

For these reasons, feeling, tafting and smelling are confidered as sensations of a groffer kind, and seeing and hearing as something of a much more refined and spiritual nature. The former we cannot perceive without having at the fame time an idea of the corporeal inftruments by which they are conveyed to us; whereas we contemplate ideas of the latter kind, as if we were wholly abstracted from the body. Hence, among other reasons,

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