friendship; which warm the heart, and diffuse over it similar
sentiments and emotions. And though all kinds of passion, even
the most disagreeable, such as grief and anger, are observed,
when excited by poetry, to convey a satisfaction, from a
mechanism of nature, not easy to be explained: Yet those more
elevated or softer affections have a peculiar influence, and
please from more than one cause or principle. Not to mention that
they alone interest us in the fortune of the persons represented,
or communicate any esteem and affection for their character.

And can it possibly be doubted, that this talent itself of poets,
to move the passions, this pathetic and sublime of sentiment, is
a very considerable merit; and being enhanced by its extreme
rarity, may exalt the person possessed of it, above every
character of the age in which he lives? The prudence, address,
steadiness, and benign government of Augustus, adorned with all
the splendour of his noble birth and imperial crown, render him
but an unequal competitor for fame with Virgil, who lays nothing
into the opposite scale but the divine beauties of his poetical
genius.

The very sensibility to these beauties, or a delicacy of taste,
is itself a beauty in any character; as conveying the purest, the
most durable, and most innocent of all enjoyments.

These are some instances of the several species of merit, that
are valued for the immediate pleasure which they communicate to
the person possessed of them. No views of utility or of future
beneficial consequences enter into this sentiment of approbation;
yet is it of a kind similar to that other sentiment, which arises