DISSERTATION I.

ON POETRY CONSIDERED AS AN

IMITATIVE ART.

HE word Imitation, like many others, is

THE

used, sometimes in a strict and proper sense, and sometimes in a sense more or less extended and improper. Its application to poetry is chiefly of the latter kind. Its precise meaning, therefore, when applied to poetry in general, is by no means obvious. No one who has seen a picture is at any loss to understand how painting is imitation. But no man, I believe, ever heard or read, for the first time, that poetry is imitation, without being conscious in some degree, of that "confusion of thought" which an ingenious writer complains of having felt whenever he has attempted to explain the imitative nature of Music. It is easy to see whence this confusion arises, if we consider the process of the mind when words thus extended from their proper significations are presented to it. We are told that "Poetry is an imitative art."

a Dr. Beattie, Essay on Poetry, &c. ch. vi. § 1.

In

In order to conceive how it is so, we naturally compare it with painting, sculpture, and such arts as are strictly and clearly imitative. But, in this comparison, the difference is so much more obvious and striking than the resemblance-we see so much more readily in what respects poetry is not properly imitation, than in what respects it is;—that the mind, at last, is left in that sort of perplexity which must always arise from words thus loosely and analogically applied, when the analogy is not sufficiently clear and obvious; that is, when, of that mixture of circumstances, like and unlike, which constitutes analogy, the latter are the most apparent.

In order to understand the following Treatise on Poetry, in which imitation is considered as the very essence of the art, it seems necessary to satisfy ourselves, if possible, with respect to two points; I. In what senses the word Imitation is, or may be, applied to Poetry. II. In what senses it was so applied by ARISTOTLE,

I.

THE only circumstance, I think, common to everything we denominate imitation, whether properly or improperly, is resemblance, of some sort

or other.

In every imitation, strictly and properly so called, two conditions seem essential :--the resem

b See the Second part of this Dissertation.

blance

blance must be immediate; i. e. between the imitation, or imitative work, itself, and the object imitated;—and, it must also be obvious. Thus, in sculpture, figure is represented by similar figure; in painting, colour and figure, by similar colour and figure; in personal imitation, or mimicry, voice and gesture, by similar voice and gesture. In all these instances, the resemblance is obvious; we recognize the object imitated: and it is, also, immediate; it lies in the imitative work, or energy, itself; or, in other words, in the very materials, or sensible media, by which the imitation is conveyed. All these copies, therefore, are called, strictly and intelligibly, imitations.

1. The materials of poetic imitation are words. These may be considered in two views; as sounds merely, and as sounds significant, or arbitrary and conventional signs of ideas. It is evidently, in the first view only, that words can bear any real resemblance to the things expressed; and, accordingly, that kind of imitation which consists in the resemblance of words considered as mere SOUND, to the sounds and motions of the objects imitated, has usually been assigned as the only instance in which the term imitative is, in its strict and proper sense, applicable to Poetry. But

See Mr. Harris's Treatise on Music, &c. ch. i.

Mr. Harris's Treatise, &c. ch. iii.

• Mr. Harris.-Lord Kaims, Elements of Criticism, vol. ii. p. I.

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But setting aside all that is the effect of fancy and of accommodated pronunciation in the reader, to which, I fear, many passages, repeatedly quoted and admired as the happiest coincidences of sound and sense, may be reduced'; setting this aside, even in such words, and such arrangements of words, as are actually, in some degree, analogous in sound or motion to the thing signified or described, the resemblance is so faiut and distant, and of so general and vague` a nature, that it would never, of itself, lead us to recognize the object imitated. We discover not the likeness till we know the meaning. The natural relation of the word to the thing signified, is pointed out only by its arbitrary or conventional relation.—I do

not

f The reader may see this sufficiently proved by Dr. Johnson in his Lives of the Poets, vol. iv. p. 183. 8vo, and in the Rambler, N° 92. " In such resemblances," as he well observes," the mind often governs the "ear, and the sounds are estimated by their meaning.' See also Lord Kaims, El. of Crit. vol. ii. p. 84, 85.

See Harris on Music, &c. ch. iii. § 1, 2. This verse of Virgil,

Stridenti miserum stipulâ disperdere carmen

is commonly cited as an example of this sort of imitation. I question, however, whether this line would have been remarked by any one as particularly harsh, if a harsh sound had not been described in it. At least, many verses full as harshly constructed might, I believe, be produced,

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