DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18825#0271
lect. vii.] gp expression. 185
the child should suck her blood instead of milk:'4
this instance of expression (for as such we are consi-
dering it) may vie with the greatest; but (i Timan-
thes, says the same author, in his picture of the
Sacrifice of Iphigenia, having exhausted every
image of grief in the figures of the spectators, and
above all in her uncle, threw a veil over the face of
her father, whose sorrow he was unable to express;"
yet, by this stroke of ingenuity, he in fact expressed
the anguish he designed; for the feelings of this
figure being wholly left to our imagination, pre-
viously excited by the distress of the others, we rise
from those expressions to a mental conception of
agony insupportable.
I humbly conceive that our present subject (ex-
pressiox) may be viewed yet differently, and that
the agitations of the mind, and by consequence of
the person, might admit of some such scale, or de-
grees, as the following :—This world, certainly, is
not the place where we expect to meet with perfect
happiness, yet, might we guess at it, perhaps we
should find it composed pretty much of negatives;
not impelled by violent irritation, or by angry pas-
sion ; not stimulated by ardent desire, or perplexed
by tremulous fear ; not anxious or careful; not su-
percilious or abject : What would be its expression ?
How would the countenance shew it ?—As some
passions exceed the powers of art by exhibiting too
great sensation, this eludes them by exhibiting too
little : the seat of felicity is the mind • the counte-
nance can only relate the matter negatively, by its
Edit. 7. B b freedom
the child should suck her blood instead of milk:'4
this instance of expression (for as such we are consi-
dering it) may vie with the greatest; but (i Timan-
thes, says the same author, in his picture of the
Sacrifice of Iphigenia, having exhausted every
image of grief in the figures of the spectators, and
above all in her uncle, threw a veil over the face of
her father, whose sorrow he was unable to express;"
yet, by this stroke of ingenuity, he in fact expressed
the anguish he designed; for the feelings of this
figure being wholly left to our imagination, pre-
viously excited by the distress of the others, we rise
from those expressions to a mental conception of
agony insupportable.
I humbly conceive that our present subject (ex-
pressiox) may be viewed yet differently, and that
the agitations of the mind, and by consequence of
the person, might admit of some such scale, or de-
grees, as the following :—This world, certainly, is
not the place where we expect to meet with perfect
happiness, yet, might we guess at it, perhaps we
should find it composed pretty much of negatives;
not impelled by violent irritation, or by angry pas-
sion ; not stimulated by ardent desire, or perplexed
by tremulous fear ; not anxious or careful; not su-
percilious or abject : What would be its expression ?
How would the countenance shew it ?—As some
passions exceed the powers of art by exhibiting too
great sensation, this eludes them by exhibiting too
little : the seat of felicity is the mind • the counte-
nance can only relate the matter negatively, by its
Edit. 7. B b freedom