ITS AUTHORS

WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND INDEX
BY
HENRY MORLEY

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. III.

1891

* * * * *

No. 417. Saturday, June 28, 1712. Addison.

'Quem tu Melpomene semel
Nascentem placido lumine videris,
Non illum labor Isthmius
Clarabit pugilem, non equus impiger, &c.
Sed quae Tibur aquae fertile perfluunt,
Et Spissae nemorum comae
Fingent AEolio carmine nobilem.'

Hor.

We may observe, that any single Circumstance of what we have formerly
seen often raises up a whole Scene of Imagery, and awakens [numberless
[1]] Ideas that before slept in the Imagination; such a particular Smell
or Colour is able to fill the Mind, on a sudden, with the Picture of the
Fields or Gardens, where we first met with it, and to bring up into View
all the Variety of Images that once attended it. Our Imagination takes
the Hint, and leads us unexpectedly into Cities or Theatres, Plains or
Meadows. We may further observe, when the Fancy thus reflects on the
Scenes that have past in it formerly, those which were at first pleasant
to behold, appear more so upon Reflection, and that the Memory heightens
the Delightfulness of the Original. A _Cartesian_ would account for both
these Instances in the following Manner.

The Sett of Ideas, which we received from such a Prospect or Garden,
having entered the Mind at the same time, have a Sett of Traces
belonging to them in the Brain, bordering very near upon one another;
when, therefore, any one of these Ideas arises in the Imagination, and
consequently dispatches a flow of Animal Spirits to its proper Trace,
these Spirits, in the Violence of their Motion, run not only into the
Trace, to which they were more particularly directed, but into several
of those that lie about it: By this means they awaken other Ideas of the
same Sett, which immediately determine a new Dispatch of Spirits, that
in the same manner open other Neighbouring Traces, till at last the
whole Sett of them is blown up, and the whole Prospect or Garden
flourishes in the Imagination. But because the Pleasure we received from
these Places far surmounted, and overcame the little Disagreeableness we
found in them; for this Reason there was at first a wider Passage worn
in the Pleasure Traces, and, on the contrary, so narrow a one in t