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SEVENTH SECTION.

On the two different Kinds of Imitation, that of the Artist of Genius, and of the servile Copyist.-Caution to the Critics not to be too ready to attribute Imitation to the Poet, a Propensity which has led Spence and Addison to do much undeserved Injury to the Reputation of the ancient classical Authors.

To say that the artist has imitated the poet, or the poet the artist, may be understood in two very different senses. Either the one has made the work of the other the actual object of his imitation, or else, both having made choice of the same model, the one has borrowed from the other his mode of imitating it.

When Virgil, for instance, describes the shield of Æneas, he imitates the sculptor who executed that shield in the first sense. The work of art itself is the immediate object of his imitation; the representations it contains

are described by him, not as if he were narrating the occurrences themselves, but simply as forming a part of the shield. If, on the other hand, Virgil had chosen the groupe of Laocoon for his model, he would have produced an imitation of the second kind. He would have copied the subject which the groupe represents, and not the groupe itself, which would have furnished him only with the leading features of his imitation.

In the first class of imitations the poet is original; in the second, he is but a copyist. The former is a part of the general system of imitation which constitutes the character of his art; and his genius is equally engaged in the labor, whether the model he has selected be the work of another art or of nature. The latter, on the contrary, degrades him altogether from the high station which it should be his ambition to maintain; instead of the objects themselves, he copies their imitations, and presents us with frigid traces of another's genius, instead of giving us original traits of his own.

It is important, however, to observe that,

since the poet and the artist must often inevitably view their subjects from precisely the same point, it cannot but happen that their representations must in many cases correspond without the least attempt at imitation or rivalry on one side or the other. Such coincidences between contemporary artists and poets, may often serve mutually to throw light on objects now no longer in existence. At the same time, to attempt to establish a design in each accidental coincidence, or to show, on every trifling occasion, that the poet has had in view some particular statue or painting, is rendering a very equivocal service, not only to the poet, but to his reader; to whom the most beautiful passages will, through such explanations, lose in originality and force whatever they may gain in clearness.

This is at once the object and the defect of a celebrated English work, the Polymetis* of Spence, which exhibits a great degree of classical learning, and a very intimate acquaintance with the remains of ancient art. In his attempt to

See Note 22, end of volume.

make the works of the ancient poets and artists throw a mutual light on each other, the author has often admirably succeeded; but I cannot help thinking, notwithstanding, that his work must prove a very fatiguing one to every reader of taste.

It is natural enough that the passage in which Valerius Flaccus describes the winged lightning on the Roman shields,

Nee primus radios, miles Romane, corusci
Fulminis et rutilas scutis diffuderis alas,

It

should be rendered more intelligible by the sight of such a shield on an ancient monument.* is possible, too, that Mars may have been represented by the ancient armorers on the helmets and shields, in the position in which Addison fancied he saw him † on a medal, hovering over Rhea, and that it was to a helmet or shield of this description that Juvenal alluded in a phrase which has puzzled so many commentators. I will even admit that the passage in

* Val. Flaccus, lib. vi,, v. 55, 56. Polymetis, Dial, vi.,

p. 50.

† See Note 23, end of volume.

Ovid where the weary Cephalus invokes the

cooling breezes,

Aura

venias

Meque juves, intresque sinus, gratissima, nostros! and where his enamored Procris mistakes Aura for the name of a rival, appears more natural when we find that the ancients did actually personify the soft breezes in their works of art, and venerated a kind of female Sylphs under the name of Aurœ.* I will grant, too, that when Juvenal, addressing a lazy patrician, compares him to a statue of Hermes, it is not easy for the reader to perceive the propriety of the comparison, unless he has previously seen a statue of the kind, and knows it to be a simple column, consisting of nothing but the head and trunk of the God, and strongly exciting the idea of inactivity from the want of both hands and feet. Illustrations of this kind are by no means to be despised, though they be not *always either necessary, or entirely satisfactory. In some cases, the poet has regarded the work

See Note 24, end of volume. † See Note 25, end of volume.

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