a region dolorous;
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp;
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,
A universe of death."

Here is displayed the force of union in

"Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades"

which yet would lose the greatest part of their effect, if they were not
the

"Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades--of _Death_."

This idea or this affection caused by a word, which nothing but a word
could annex to the others, raises a very great degree of the sublime,
and this sublime is raised yet higher by what follows, a "_universe of
death_." Here are again two ideas not presentable but by language, and
an union of them great and amazing beyond conception; if they may
properly be called ideas which present no distinct image to the mind;
but still it will be difficult to conceive how words can move the
passions which belong to real objects, without representing these
objects clearly. This is difficult to us, because we do not sufficiently
distinguish, in our observations upon language, between a clear
expression and a strong expression. These are frequently confounded with
each other, though they are in reality extremely different. The former
regards the understanding, the latter belongs to the passions. The one
describes a thing as it is, the latter describes it as it is felt. Now,
as there is a moving tone of voice, an impassioned countenance, an
agitated gesture, which affect independently of the things about which
they are exerted, so there are words, and certain dispositions of words,
which being peculiarly devoted to passionate subjects, and always used
by those who are under the influence of any passion, touch and move us
more than those which far more clearly and distinctly express the
subject-matter. We yield to sympathy what we refuse to description. The
truth is, all verbal description, merely as naked description, though
never so exact, conveys so poor and insufficient an idea of the thing
described, that it could scarcely have the smallest effect, if the
speaker did not call in to his aid those modes of speech that mark a
strong and lively feeling in himself. Then, by the contagion of our
passions, we catch a fire already kindled in another, which probably
might never have been struck out by the object described. Words, by
strongly conveying the passions by those means which we have already
mentioned, fully compensate for their weak