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The DESIGN.

TH

HERE are certain powers in human nature which feem to hold a middle place. between the organs of bodily fenfe and the faculties of moral perception: They have been call'd by a very general name, THE POWERS OF IMAGINATION. Like the external fenfes, they relate to matter and motion; and at the fame time, give the mind ideas analogous to thofe of moral approbation and diflike. As they are the inlets of fome of the most exquifite pleasures with which we are acquainted, it has naturally happened that men of warm and fenfible tempers have fought means to recall the delightful perceptions which they afford, independent of the objects which originally produc'd them. This gave rife to the imitative or defigning arts; fome of which, as painting and fculpture, directly copy the external appearances which were admir'd in nature; others, as mufic and poetry, bring them back to remembrance by figns univerfally establish'd and understood.

- But thefe arts, as they grew more correct and deliberate, were of course led to extend their imitation beyond the peculiar objects of the imaginative powers; efpecially poetry, which making ufe of language as the inftrument by which it imitates, is confequently become an unlimited representative of every fpecies and mode of being. Yet as their primary intention was only to express the objects of imagination, and as they still abound chiefly in ideas of that class, they of course retain their original character, and all the different pleasures which they excite, are term'd, in general, PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION..

The Defign of the following poem is to give a view of thefe, in the largest acceptation of the term; fo that whatever our imagination, feels from the agreeable appearances of nature, and all the various entertainment we meet with either in poetry, painting, mufic, or any of the elegant arts, might be deducible from one or other of those principles in the conftitution of the human mind, which are here establish'd and explain'd.

In executing this general plan, it was necessary first of all to diftinguish the Imagination from our

other

other faculties; and in the next place to characterize thofe original forms or properties of being about which it is converfant, and which are by nature adapted to it, as light is to the eyes, or truth to the understanding. Thefe properties Mr. Addifon bad reduced to the three general claffes of greatness, novelty, and beauty; and into these we may analyfe every object, however complex, which, properly speaking, is delightful to the imagination. But fuch an object may also include many other fources of pleafure, and its beauty, or novelty, or grandeur, will make a stronger impreffion by reafon of this concurrence. Befides which, the imitative arts, especially poetry, owe much of their effect to a fimilar exhibition of properties quite foreign to the imagination, infomuch that in every line of the most applauded poems, we meet with either ideas drawn from the external fenfes, or truths difcover'd to the understanding, or illustrations of contrivance and final causes, or above all the reft, with circumstances proper to awaken and ingage the paffions. It was therefore necessary to enumerate and exemplify thefe different fpecies of pleasure; efpecially that from the paf fions, which as it is fupreme in the nobleft works of human genius, fo being in fome particulars not a little

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a little furprizing, gave an opportunity to enliven the didactic turn of the poem, by introducing an allegory to account for the appearance.

After these parts of the fubject which hold chiefly of admiration, or naturally warm and in tereft the mind, a pleasure of a very different nature, that which arifes from ridicule, came next to be confider'd. As this is the foundation of the comic manner in all the arts, and has been but very imperfectly treated by moral writers, it was thought proper to give it a particular illustration, and to distinguish the general fources from which the ridicule of characters is deriv'd. Here too a change of ftile became neceffary; such a one as might yet be confiftent, if paffible, with the general taste of compofition in the ferious parts of the fubject: nor is it an easy task to give any tolerable force to images of this kind, without running either into the gigantic expreffions of the mockberoic, or the familiar and poetical raillery of profefs'd fatire; neither of which would have been proper bere.

The materials of all imitation being thus laid open, nothing now remain'd but to illustrate some particular