Some later writers for the stage have, no doubt, avoided these defects of the exactest of our old dramatists. But do they reach his excellencies? Posterity, I am afraid, will judge otherwise, whatever may be now thought of some more fashionable comedies. And if they do not, neither the state of general manners, nor the turn of the public taste, appears to be such as countenances the expectation of greater improvements. To those who are not over-sanguine in their hopes, our forefathers will perhaps be thought to have furnished (what, in nature, seem linked together) the fairest example of dramatic, as of real manners.
But here it will probably be said, an affected zeal for the honour of our old poets has betrayed their unwary advocate into a concession, which discredits his whole pains on this subject. For to what purpose, may it be asked, this waste of dramatic criticism, when, by the allowance of the idle speculatist himself, his theory is likely to prove so unprofitable, at least, if it be not ill-founded? The only part I can take in this nice conjuncture, is to screen myself behind the authority of a much abler critical theorist, who had once the misfortune to find himself in these unlucky circumstances, and has apologized for it. The objection is fairly urged by this fine writer; and in so profound and speculative an age, as the present, I presume to suggest no other answer, than he has thought fit to give to it. “Speculations of this sort, says he, do not bestow genius on those who have it not; they do not, perhaps, afford any great assistance to those who have; and most commonly the men of genius are even incapable of being assisted by speculation. To what use then do they serve? Why, to lead up to the first principles of beauty such persons as love reasoning and are fond of reducing, under the controul of philosophy, subjects that appear the most independent of it, and which are generally thought abandoned to the caprice of taste[15].”
A
DISCOURSE
ON
POETICAL IMITATION.
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, from the exercise of our natural faculties on such objects as lie in common to all observers?”
Secondly, “Whether, in the case of confessed Imitations, any certain and necessary conclusion holds to the disadvantage 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[16] his reasoning, yet never fails to clear and brighten his imagery) excellently illustrates by the similitude of a mirror; “which, says he, as you turn about and oppose to the surrounding world, presents you instantly with a SUN, STARS, and SKIES; with your OWN, and every OTHER living form; with the EARTH, and its several appendages of TREES, PLANTS, and FLOWERS[17].” Just so, on whatever side the poet turns his imagination, the shapes of things immediately imprint themselves upon it, and a new corresponding creation reflects the old one. This shadowy ideal world, though unsubstantial as the American vision of souls[18], yet glows with such apparent life, that it becomes, thenceforth, the object of other mirrors, and is itself original to future reflexions; This secondary or derivative image, is that alone which Criticism considers under the Idea of Imitation.