It must not however be thought, that our passions can be raised by painting to such a height as can be done by words. Of all the successive incidents that concur to produce a great event, a picture has the choice but of one, because it is confined to a single instant of time. And though the impression it makes, is the deepest that can be made instantaneously; yet seldom can a passion be raised to any height in an instant, or by a single impression. It was observed above, that our passions, those especially of the sympathetic kind, require a succession of impressions; and for that reason, reading and still more acting have greatly the advantage, by the opportunity of reiterating impressions without end. Upon the whole, it is by means of ideal presence that our passions are excited; and till words produce that charm they avail nothing. Even real events intitled to our belief, must be conceived present and passing in our sight before they can move us. And this theory serves to explain several phenomena otherwise unaccountable. A misfortune happening to a stranger, makes a less impression than happening to a man we know, even where we are no way interested in him: our acquaintance with this man, however slight, aids the conception of his suffering in our presence. For the same reason, we are little moved with any distant event; because we have more difficulty to conceive it present, than an event that happened in our neighbourhood. Every one is sensible, that describing a past event as present, has a fine effect in language. For what other reason than that it aids the conception of ideal presence? Take the following example. And now with shouts the shocking armies clos’d, To lances lances, shields to shields oppos’d; Host against host the shadowy legions drew, The sounding darts an iron tempest flew; Victors and vanquish’d join promiscuous cries, Triumphing shouts and dying groans arise, With streaming blood the slipp’ry field is dy’d, And slaughter’d heroes swell the dreadful tide. In this passage we may observe how the writer inflamed with the subject, insensibly slips from the past time to the present; led to this form of narration by conceiving every circumstance as passing in his own sight. And this at the same time has a fine effect upon the reader, by advancing him to be as it were a spectator. But this change from the past to the present requires some preparation; and is not graceful in the same sentence where there is no stop in the sense; witness the following passage. Thy fate was next, O Phæstus! doom’d to feel The great Idomeneus’ protended steel; Whom Borus sent his son and only joy From fruitful Tarne to the fields of Troy. The Cretan jav’lin reach’d him from afar, And pierc’d his shoulder as he mounts his car. _Iliad_, v. 57. It is still worse to fall back to the past in the same period; for this is an anticlimax in description: