PREFACE.

T

T will, without doubt, be expected, that the reader should be made privy to the reasons, upon which this work was undertaken, and is now made public. The intrinfic beauty of the piece itself first allured me to the attempt; and a regard for the public, especially for those who might be unable to read the original, was the main inducement to its publication.

The Treatise on the SUBLIME had slept for feveral ages, covered up in the dust of libraries, till the middle of the fixteenth century. The first Latin version by Gabriel de Petra was printed at Geneva in 1612. But the first good tranflation of it into any modern language was the French one of the famous Boileau, which, tho not always faithful to the text, yet has an elegance and a fpirit, which few will ever be able to equal, much less to furpass,

The present translation was finished, before I knew of any prior attempt to make Longinus Speak English. The first translation of him I met with, was publish'd by Mr. Welsted in 1724. But I was very much surprised, upon a perufal,

to

to find it only Boileau's translation misrepresented, and mangled. For every beauty is impaired, if not totally effaced, and every error (even down to those of the printer) most injuriously preferved.

I have fince accidentally met with two other English verfions of this Treatise; one by J. Hall Efq; London 1652; the other without a name, but printed at Oxford in 1698, and said in the title-page to have been compared with the French of Boileau. I faw nothing in either of these, which did not yield the greatest encouragement to a new attempt.

No less than nine years have intervened fince the finishing of this translation, in which Space it has been frequently revised, fubmitted to the cenfure of friends, and amended again and again by a more attentive study of the original. The design was, if possible, to make it read like an original: whether I have fucceeded in this, the bulk of my readers may judge; but whether the tranflation be good, or come any thing near to the life, the spirit, the energy of Longinus, is a decision peculiar to men of learning and taste, who alone know the difficulties which attend fuch an undertaking, and will be impartial enough to give the Translator the necessary indulgence.

Longinus himself was never accurately enough published, nor thoroughly understood, till

Dr.

i

* Dr. Pearce did him justice in his late editions at London. My thanks are due to that gentleman, not only for his correct editions on account of which the whole learned world is indebted to him; but for those animadverfions and corrections of this translation, with which he so kindly favoured me. Most of the remarks and obfervations were drawn up, before I had read his Latin notes.

I am not the leaft in pain, about the pertinency of those instances which I have brought from the Sacred writers, as well as from fome of the finest of our own country, to illustrate the criticisms of Longinus. I am only fearful, lest among the multiplicity of such as might be bad, I may be thought to have omitted some of the best. I am Sensible, that what I have done, might be done much better; but if I have the good fortune to contribute a little, towards the fixing a true judicious taste, and enabling my readers to distinguish fenfe from found, grandeur from pomp, and the Sublime from fuftian and bombast, I shall think my time well spent; and shall be ready to Submit to the cenfures of a judge, but shall only Smile at the snarling of what is commonly called

Of the Parenthyrse, or ill-timed emotion.

SECT. IV.

Of the Frigid.

SECT. V.

Whence these imperfections take their rife.

SECT. VI.

is im-

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5

8

12

13

14

18

That a knowledge of the true Sublime is attainable. 19

That the definition, which the writers of rhetoric give

of Amplification, is improper.

63

SECT.

SECT. XIII.

Of Plato's Sublimity.

Of Imitation.

SECT. XIV.

65
67

That the best authors ought to be our models in writing.

SECT. XVII.

That Figures and Sublimity mutually assist one another. 89

1

SECT. XVIII.

Of Question and Interrogation.

92

95

97

SECT. ΧΧΙ.

That Copulatives weaken the stile.

99

SECT. XXIII.

Of Change of Number.

107

SECT. XXIV.

That Singulars sometimes cause Sublimity.

110

SECT. XXV.

Of Change of Tense.

112

ŠECT. XXVI.

Of Change of Person.

113

SECT. XXVII.

Of another Change of Perfon.

115

119

SECT. ΧΧΙΧ.

That Circumlocution carried too far grows infipid. 122

SECT. XXX.

Of Choice of terms.

123

SECT.