DISSERTATION III.

ON

POETICAL IMITATION.

I UNDERTAKE, in the following discourse,

to consider Two QUESTIONS, in which the credit of almost all great writers, since the time of Homer, is vitally concerned.

First, “Whether that Conformity in Phrase. "or Sentiment between two writers of different times, which we call IMITATION, may "not with probability enough, for the most "part, be accounted for from general causes, arising from our common nature; that is,

66

from the exercise of our natural faculties "on such objects as lie in common to all observers ?

1

Secondly, “Whether, in the case of con"fessed Imitations, any certain and necessary conclusion holds to the disadvantage

66

of the natural GENIUS of the imitator ?"— QUESTIONS, which there seems no fit method of resolving, but by taking the matter pretty deep, and deducing it from its first principles.

SECTION I.

ALL Poetry, to speak with Aristotle and the Greek critics (if for so plain a point authorities be thought wanting) is, properly, imitation. It is, indeed, the noblest and most extensive of the mimetic arts; having all creation for its object, and ranging the entire circuit of universal being. In this view every wondrous original, which ages have gazed at, as the offspring of creative fancy; and of which poets themselves, to do honour to their inventions, have feigned, as of the immortal panoply of their heroes, that it came down from heaven, is itself but a copy, a transcript from some brighter page of this vast volume of the universe. Thus all is derived; all is unoriginal. And the office of genius is but to select the fairest forms of things, and to present them in due place and circumstance, and in the richest colouring of expression, to the imagination. This primary or original copying, which in the ideas of Philosophy is Imitation, is, in the language of Criticism, called INVENTION.

Again; of the endless variety of these original forms, which the poet's eye is incessantly traversing, those, which take his attention most, his active mimetic faculty prompts him to convert into fair and living resemblances. This magical operation the divine philosopher (whose fervid fancy, though it sometimes obscures his reasoning, yet never fails to clear and brighten his imagery) excellently illus trates by the similitude of a mirror; "whi

says he, as you turn about and oppose to surrounding world, presents you inst

"with a SUN, STARS, and SKIES; wit

OWN, and every OTHER living for "the EARTH, and its several app 66 TREES, PLANTS, and FLOWERS on whatever side the poet turr tion, the shapes of things imm themselves upon it, and a creation reflects the old c ideal world, though uns rican vision of souls. apparent life, that i' the object of other mi

w far the same common prine will go towards effecting the e spoken of, it is necessary to distinctly

In all that range of natural objects, over ich the restless imagination of the poet patiates, there is no subject of picture or