THUS Poetry, by its imitative and energetic powers, presents us with a new world, every where representative of the old one, fpringing out of IMAGINATION, that sublime inventive faculty which is a compound of Will and Memory, the former exercifing a kind of plastic and creative power in the treasures of the latter. Though Imagination can add nothing to the original stock of ideas with which the mind is furnished by the External and Internal Senfes, or change

any of the materials of the old creation; it affumes an abfolute command and authority over them, to join, to combine, to mix, to vary, to compound, and to difpofe, them, in every different form and representation of Description, Fiction, Perfonification, Vision, or Allufion. And, if the wild and inventive genius of our own countryman was not inftructed in the cold philosophy of Poetry, his warm and mimetic fancy was fufceptible of its fineft influence: and, from the following animated picture which he has given of his profeffion, one would fuppofe, that he

was

was not entirely unacquainted with the rationale of the Art.

The Poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling Doth glance from heav'n to earth, from earth to heav'n;

And, as IMAGINATION bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to fhape, and gives to airy nothings A local habitation and a name.

In the higher departments of the Mufe, Poetry feigns Actions and Events succeeding each other in due order, gives them the life and animation of Perfons, of the first distinction, with the confiftencies of Time and Place, and every other circumftance of probable history, confulting the gratification of the fublimer fentiments and affections of the mind, and finishing the whole plan into the resemblance of a more complete, more beautiful, more engaging, and more inftructive, truth.*

Shakespeare's Midfum. Night's Dream, A&t. i. Sc. 1. 'Ea a fundamento prorfus nobili excitata videtur, quod ad dignitatem humanæ naturæ imprimis fpectat. Cum enim mundus fenfibilis fit animâ rationali dignitate inferior, videtur poefis hæc humanæ naturæ largiri, quæ hiftoria denegat; atque animo umbris rerum utcunque fatisfacere, cum folida haberi non poffint. Si quis enim rem acutius introfpiciat, firmum ex poefi fumitur argumentum, magnitudinem rerum magis illuftrem, ordinem magis perfectum, et varie

tatem

In the choice and adoption of the Means requifite to the accomplishment of fo complete an end, in their poetical execution, and in conducting the whole to the best effect, Judgment has a very delicate and difficult task. Fancy may be luxuriant, and Genius prolific; but REASON, however filently and imperceptibly it may work, has to prepare and to correct the natural fertility of the foil, and to affist in nourishing the production, till it ripen to its full maturity. It has to adjust the propriety of the inventions, to rectify the falfities of tafte, to arrange the order and fucceffion of the parts, and to unite them into one confiftent whole: a piece of philofophy which forms a very deep and recondite branch

tatem magis pulchram, animæ humanæ complacere, quam in natura ipfa post lapfum, reperire ullo modo poffit. Qua. propter cum res geftæ et eventus, qui veræ hiftoriæ fubjiciuntur, non fint ejus amplitudinis, in qua anima humana fibi fatisfaciat, præfto eft poefis, quæ facta magis heroica confingat: Cum hiftoria fucceffus rerum, minime pro meritis virtutum et fcelerum, narret; corrigit eam poefis, et exitus et fortunas, fecundum merita et ex lege nemefeos, exhibit: Cum hiftoria vera, obvia rerum fatietate et fimilitudine, animæ humanæ faftidio fit; reficit eam poefis inexpectata, et varia, et viciffitudinum plena canens. Baconus De Augm. Sc. lib. ii. c. 13. U

of

of learning, eminently called Criticism, or the Philofophy of Judgment.

This part of philofophy did not escape the inquifitive attention of Ariftotle, whose ftrong and comprehenfive mind was not only the repofitory of all the learning of his but the author and improver of many parts. His penetrating eye could not view those admirable models of poetic art, exhibited in the drama of Sophocles, and in the epos of Homer, and contemplate the effects which they produced on the mind and the different affections of pleasure and pain, without inquiring into the causes which confpired, in their exact and admirable combination, to that production. In this arduous investigation he took to pieces the compofitions, and reduced them to their fimpleft parts and principles. By this means he difcovered their artifice and machinery, how every part was formed, how one operated upon another, and how they all co-operated together in the formation of a perfect whole. So that the inventive and poetical genius of Homer

Homer and Sophocles or Euripides produced the most admirable fpecimens of the art; and the analytical and philofophical genius of Ariftotle difcovered the logic or rationale of these specimens.

In this philofophical analyfis, all the parts and connections, all the beauties and proprieties, all the unities and confiftencies, which are affembled combined and executed by the exertion of the sublimest and most judicious imagination, are explained in the clearest and most didactic manner, and with fo much foundness and difcrimination of judgment, that the criticism itself became a model on which to form the plan of the future poet, as well as the ftandard to direct the decifion of the future critic.

But, though many important advantages have been derived both to the works of the poet and to the judgment of the critic, from this incomparable production of Aristotle; yet, in many inftances, the genius of the one has been checked in its native vigor, and the judgment of the other warped and contracted

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