Smells and tastes have some share too in ideas of greatness; but it is a small one, weak in its nature, and confined in its operations. I shall only observe that no smells or tastes can produce a grand sensation, except excessive bitters, and intolerable stenches. It is true that these affections of the smell and taste, when they are in their full force, and lean directly upon the sensory, are simply painful, and accompanied with no sort of delight; but when they are moderated, as in a description or narrative, they become sources of the sublime, as genuine as any other, and upon the very same principle of a moderated pain. “A cup of bitterness”; “to drain the bitter cup of fortune”; “the bitter apples of Sodom”; these are all ideas suitable to a sublime description. Nor is this passage of Virgil without sublimity, where the stench of the vapor in Albunea conspires so happily with the sacred horror and gloominess of that prophetic forest:

At rex sollicitus monstris oracula Fauni

Fatidici genitoris adit, lucosque sub alta

Consulit Albunea, nemorum qu? maxima sacro

Fonte sonat; s?vamque exhalat opaca Mephitim.

In the sixth book, and in a very sublime description, the poisonous exhalation of Acheron is not forgotten, nor does it ............