SUBLIME', in literature, that style or manner of writing which a sublime thought, or a fact sublime in its charac ter, is suitably presented to the mind. It has often been said,—but we suspect there is no valid ground for the assertion, —that when men grow philosophical.
they can seldom excel in tho sublime. The sources of the sublime in language are well enumerated by Longinus. The first is elevation of mind ; the second, ar dent sensibility ; the third, the proper use of figures; the fourth, grandeur of diction ; and the fifth, a dignified har mony of arrangement. The sublime in narration is exemplified in the well known commencement of the book of Genesis : ," God said let there be light, and there was light."—Sublime in the Fine Arts, high or exalted in style. That which in art is raised above the higher standard of nature or its prototypes. Sublimity is incompatible with our ideas of elegance, grace, or any of the other sources of beauty, though these may all enter into an object wherein those and many other qualities may be combined with sublimity. They have been, how ever, not unfrequently considered as some of the sources of the sublime. The nod of Jupiter, in the hands of such a, master as Homer, is an indication of sublimity ; but when Longinus tells us, that, as ap plied to literature, the ealstituent ingre dients of sublimity are boldness in thought, the pathetic, proper application of figures, use of tropes and beautiful ex pressions, and last, musical structure and sounds, we are inclined to think he had very indistinct notions of it himself. We cannot better exemplify the meaning of this term than by referring the reader to the works of .3.Iiehael Angelo in the Sis tine Chapel, wherein, as Fuseli has truly said, " his line is uniformly grim(); char acter and beauty were admitted only as far its they could be made subservient to grandeur. The child, the female, mean ness, deformity, were by hint indiscrimi nately stamped with grandeur. A beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of pov erty; his infants teem with the man, his inert are giants." The terribile via, hint
ed at by Agostino Caraeci, is indeed the sublime. Note.—The true nature of sub limity is a subject of great interest and importance in mental philosophy, and it has always been a favorite subject of speculation. The term, psychologically considered, has two significations: one that of the quality or circumstance in object, which raises the emotion named sublimity; the other that of the emotion itself. The invariable condition in oh jects, either material or moral, is vast ness or intensity. The invariable condi tion of the emotion of sublimity—that which distinguishes this emotion from every other emotion—is n comprehension of this vastness, with a simultaneous feel ing of our own comparative insignificance, together with a concomitant sense of present security front any danger which might result from this superior power. The antithesis to the emotion of st;iblim ity is the emotion of contempt. In every ease of sublimity in material objects, whatever feelings may simultaneously concur, vastness will be found an inva riable condition—vastness either of form or of power; as in the violent dashing of a-cataract, in the roar of the ocean, in the violence of the storm, in the majestic quiet of Mont Blanc, preserving its calm amidst all the storms that play around it. In the moral world, the invariable condi tion of sublimity is intensity—intensity of swill. Mere intensity is sufficient to produce the sublime. Lear, who appeals to the heavens, "for they are old like him," is sublime from the very intensity of his sufferings and his passions. Lady Macbeth is sublime from the intensity of her swill, which crushes every female feel ing for the attaintnent of her object. Seatvola, with his hand in the burning coals, exhibits an intensity of will which is sublime. In all the eases above-men tioned we are moved by it vivid feeling of some greater power than our own ; or some will more capable of suffering, inore in its strength, than our feeble va cillating swill.