Instruction, no doubt, is the chief end of comparison, but not the only end. In works addressed to the imagination, comparison may be employed with great success to put a subject in a strong point of view. A lively idea is formed of a man’s courage, by likening it to that of a lion; and eloquence is exalted in our imagination, by comparing it to a river overflowing its banks, and involving all in its impetuous course. The same effect is produced by contrast. A man in prosperity, becomes more sensible of his happiness, by opposing his condition to that of a person in want of bread. Thus comparison is subservient to poetry as well as to philosophy; and with respect to both, the foregoing observation holds equally, that resemblance among objects of the same kind, and contrast among objects of different kinds, have no effect. Such a comparison neither tends to gratify our curiosity, nor to set the objects compared in a stronger light. Two apartments in a palace, similar in shape, size, and furniture, make separately as good a figure as when compared; and the same observation applies to two similar copartments in a garden. On the other hand, oppose a regular building to a fall of water, or a good picture to a towering hill, or even a little dog to a large horse, and the contrast will produce no effect. But resemblance, where the objects compared are of different kinds, and contrast where the objects compared are of the same kind, have each of them remarkably an enlivening effect. The poets, such of them as have a just taste, draw all their similes from things that in the main differ widely from the principal subject; and they never attempt a contrast but where the things have a common genus and a resemblance in the capital circumstances. Place together a large and a small sized animal of the same species, the one will appear greater the other less, than when viewed separately. When we oppose beauty to deformity, each makes a greater figure by the comparison. Upon a subject not only in itself curious, but of great importance in all the fine arts, I must be more particular. That resemblance and contrast have an enlivening effect upon objects of sight, is made sufficiently evident; and that they have the same effect upon objects of the other senses, will appear from induction. Nor is this law confined to the external senses. Characters contrasted, make a greater figure by the opposition. Iago, in the tragedy of _Othello_, says He hath a daily beauty in his life, That makes me ugly. The character of a fop, and of a rough warrior, are no where more successfully contrasted than by Shakespear.