goblins, of which none can form clear ideas, affect minds which give
credit to the popular tales concerning such sorts of beings. Those
despotic governments which are founded on the passions of men, and
principally upon the passion of fear, keep their chief as much as may be
from the public eye. The policy has been the same in many cases of
religion. Almost all the heathen temples were dark. Even in the
barbarous temples of the Americans at this day, they keep their idol in
a dark part of the hut, which is consecrated to his worship. For this
purpose too the Druids performed all their ceremonies in the bosom of
the darkest woods, and in the shade of the oldest and most spreading
oaks. No person seems better to have understood the secret of
heightening, or of setting terrible things, if I may use the expression,
in their strongest light, by the force of a judicious obscurity than
Milton. His description of death in the second book is admirably
studied; it is astonishing with what a gloomy pomp, with what a
significant and expressive uncertainty of strokes and coloring, he has
finished the portrait of the king of terrors:

"The other shape,
If shape it might be called that shape had none
Distinguishable, in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed;
For each seemed either; black he stood as night;
Fierce as ten furies; terrible as hell;
And shook a deadly dart. What seemed his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on."

In this description all is dark, uncertain, confused, terrible, and
sublime to the last degree.

SECTION IV.

OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CLEARNESS AND OBSCURITY WITH REGARD TO THE
PASSIONS.

It is one thing to make an idea clear, and another to make it
_affecting_ to the imagination. If I make a drawing of a palace, or a
temple, or a landscape, I present a very clear idea of those objects;
but then (allowing for the effect of imitation which is something) my
picture can at most affect only as the palace, temple, or landscape,
would have affected in the reality. On the other hand, the most lively
and spirited verbal description I can give raises a very obscure and
imperfect _idea_ of such objects; but then it is in my power to raise a
stronger _emotion_ by the description than I could do by the best
painting. This experience constantly evinces. The proper manner of
conveying the _affections_ of the mind from one to