spoils of beauty, is a tension continually
relieved; which approaches to the nature of mediocrity. But if I were to
say how I find myself affected upon such occasions, I should say that
the sublime suffers less by being united to some of the qualities of
beauty, than beauty does by being joined to greatness of quantity, or
any other properties of the sublime. There is something so overruling in
whatever inspires us with awe, in all things which belong ever so
remotely to terror, that nothing else can stand in their presence. There
lie the qualities of beauty either dead or unoperative; or at most
exerted to mollify the rigor and sternness of the terror, which is the
natural concomitant of greatness. Besides the extraordinary great in
every species, the opposite to this, the dwarfish and diminutive, ought
to be considered. Littleness, merely as such, has nothing contrary to
the idea of beauty. The humming-bird, both in shape and coloring, yields
to none of the winged species, of which it is the least; and perhaps his
beauty is enhanced by his smallness. But there are animals, which, when
they are extremely small, are rarely (if ever) beautiful. There is a
dwarfish size of men and women, which is almost constantly so gross and
massive in comparison of their height, that they present us with a very
disagreeable image. But should a man be found not above two or three
feet high, supposing such a person to have all the parts of his body of
a delicacy suitable to such a size, and otherwise endued with the common
qualities of other beautiful bodies, I am pretty well convinced that a
person of such a stature might be considered as beautiful; might be the
object of love; might give us very pleasing ideas on viewing him. The
only thing which could possibly interpose to check our pleasure is, that
such creatures, however formed, are unusual, and are often therefore
considered as something monstrous. The large and gigantic, though very
compatible with the sublime, is contrary to the beautiful. It is
impossible to suppose a giant the object of love. When we let our
imagination loose in romance, the ideas we naturally annex to that size
are those of tyranny, cruelty, injustice, and everything horrid and
abominable. We paint the giant ravaging the country, plundering the
innocent traveller, and afterwards gorged with his half-living flesh:
such are Polyphemus, Cacus, and others, who make so great a figure in
romances and heroic poems. Th