our business; the idea of a bull is therefore great, and it
has frequently a place in sublime descriptions, and elevating
comparisons. Let us look at another strong animal, in the two distinct
lights in which we may consider him. The horse in the light of an
useful beast, fit for the plough, the road, the draft; in every social
useful light, the horse has nothing sublime; but is it thus that we are
affected with him, _whose neck is clothed with thunder, the glory of
whose nostrils is terrible, who swalloweth the ground with fierceness
and rage, neither believeth that it is the sound of the trumpet_? In
this description, the useful character of the horse entirely disappears,
and the terrible and sublime blaze out together. We have continually
about us animals of a strength that is considerable, but not pernicious.
Amongst these we never look for the sublime; it comes upon us in the
gloomy forest, and in the howling wilderness, in the form of the lion,
the tiger, the panther, or rhinoceros. Whenever strength is only useful,
and employed for our benefit or our pleasure, then it is never sublime;
for nothing can act agreeably to us, that does not act in conformity to
our will; but to act agreeably to our will, it must be subject to us,
and therefore can never be the cause of a grand and commanding
conception. The description of the wild ass, in Job, is worked up into
no small sublimity, merely by insisting on his freedom, and his setting
mankind at defiance; otherwise the description of such an animal could
have had nothing noble in it. _Who hath loosed_ (says he) _the bands of
the wild ass? whose house I have made the wilderness and the barren land
his dwellings. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth
he the voice of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture._
The magnificent description of the unicorn and of leviathan, in the same
book, is full of the same heightening circumstances: _Will the unicorn
be willing to serve thee? canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in
the furrow? wilt thou trust him because his strength is great?--Canst
thou draw out leviathan with an hook? will he make a covenant with thee?
wilt thou take him for a servant forever? shall not one be cast down
even at the sight of him?_ In short, wheresoever we find strength, and
in what light soever we look upon power, we shall all along observe the
sublime the concomitant of terror, and contempt the attendant on a
strength