so that if succeeding poets, endued with judgment, looked abroad into nature, they not only might, but must meet with them; while men of irregular fancies could avoid them only by avoiding truth and probability. This theory accounts for resemblances of works, by resemblances of things; and forbids any suspicion of imitation, unless we are guided to it by particular circumstances. In a matter of such vast extent, it is as difficult to refute as to prove. There would indeed be a very short method of overthrowing at once Mr. Hurd's doctrine; could I write a work of imagination, full of beauties, formed on the model of nature, and yet different from those of the ancients, I should then demonstrate that they have not exhausted it: but such a confutation is far beyond my power. Without aspiring to genius, I shall think myself very happy, if I can frame my opinions according to the dictates of good

sense.

If we examine this question à posteriori, from practice and experience of what has been done, though we shall meet with nothing very decisive, I think, however, that the advantage will not be on Mr. Hurd's side: he will, indeed, quote many striking similarities of this kind, from writers who could have had no knowledge of one another; but he will be answered, 1. That such writers can hardly be found; that the sacred writings should not be mentioned, nor compared, with Homer; since we are talking of human, not divine compositions; and that Shakespeare, the modern who appears

appears freest from exception, though ignorant himself, lived in a learned age. 2. That their example can only be quoted against those who think every similarity must be an imitation, without any regard to the circumstances of the writers. That, as such a coincidence is possible, we must employ it to explain a phænomenon for which we could not otherwise account; but that when the more easy and probable one may be recurred to, we ought to employ it. On the other hand, an antagonist of Mr. Hurd's would have occasion for no great compass of reading to discover, in the most modern writers, many original images and sentiments. He would select them, particularly, from those very writers, who, from an apprehension that every thing had been already said, had cramped their natural genius, by an open, perpetual imitation of the ancients; and he would infer, with some plausibility, that had they written from their own natural feelings and observations, they would have been still more original. He would desire Mr. Hurd to reconcile this with his principles, and even press him for a precise answer, at what period of the history of letters the scene had been closed, nature exhausted, and succeeding writers reduced to the hope of imitating successfully. Wherever he chose to fix it, the critic would bring against him so many later original images, that the resource of disputing their claim, and hunting for some distant allusion, or general resemblance, would be hardly sufficient. Without following minutely our author through

his copious deductions à priori, in which he has certainly shewn great learning and ingenuity, I shall only make two or three general observations, which may give an idea, both of his method of reasoning, and of my objections to it.

He enters upon a task, in my opinion, far above human abilities. To examine the origin of our ideas is the business of metaphysics, and the greatest philosophers have failed in the attempt. But it is perhaps still more difficult to embrace them all at one view, and to class them according to their different objects, in so accurate a manner as to assure ourselves that we have suffered no material species to escape. This is, however, what Mr. Hurd undertakes. He makes three divisions of the world of ideas which can enter into poetry. 1. The vast compages of corporeal forms of which this universe is compounded. 2. The internal workings and movements of our own mind; under which the manners, sentiments, and passions are comprehended. 3. The outward operations, which are made objective to sense by the means of speech, gesture, and action. These are again by him subdivided with an exactness in which I shall not pursue him. I shall only remark, 1. That his smallest species are yet too general to prove any thing. That Milton, for instance, must, like Homer, have made use of moral, religious, and economical sentiments, and could not invent any new species, I shall readily allow; nor is it upon such general resemblances that a charge of. imitation is ever founded. It is upon more particular similarities,

similarities, where Mr. Hurd can never attain to shew that those ideas were the only ones. The only method Mr. Hurd can there follow, is a sort of vicious reasoning in a circle; to look for the images upon every subject he can meet with in the oldest authors, and then to conclude that they are the only ones existing.

2. Even supposing that he had exhausted the whole stock of nature, and had shewn that every image, singly, had been so obvious as to be seen and employed by the first writers, a much larger field would still remain; their different combinations, which are infinite. With regard only to human manners, the great sources of character, passion, and situation, may be combined in such a variety of ways, as no algebra could reach. Let us, for a moment, abandon fiction, and enter into historic truth. Consult the annals of any nation; observe the various effects of the modifications of those three principles upon their history, and then say whether the operations of human nature are easily classed, or circumscribed.

3. This consideration of the shifting picture of mankind, as an illustration, leads us to consider it in itself. We shall find it a most extensive and infinite range of ideas, almost sufficient of itself to preserve genius from imitation; since to the writers of every age and country it appears in a different shape. It is the manners, the government, the religion, of that age and country he is to study; and whether the nature of his subject allows him to introduce them at full length; whether he can

Warbur

ton's Divine

Legation.

only adorn his works with distant allusions to them; whether he can only catch the general spirit of them, they will always make him an original. I shall quote one instance of what I mean, and that from an authority Mr. Hurd will hardly dispute. When Milton conceived the glorious plan of an English epic, he soon saw the most striking subjects had been taken from him; that Homer had taken all morality for his province, and Virgil exhausted the subject of politics. Religion remained; but as Paganism, though it furnished very agreeable scenes of machinery, took too slight a hold on men's minds to build the story of the epopea upon it, he had recourse to Christianity; and, taking his story from an article of our faith, struck out a new species of epic poetry; but he could never have done it, had not the manners of that age, attached to religion in general, and to that tenet in particular, warmed his imagination, and given it a dignity and importance, which he could never have transfused into his poem, if he had not first felt it himself. Nor is this observation repugnant to another I have made elsewhere,-that the manla Littéra-ners of the ancients were more favourable to poetry ture, p. 19. than ours. I think so still, of their manners, as

Essai sur

l'Etude de

well as their languages. Yet I would have our poets employ our own, not only for the sake of variety, but because we shall make the best use of those with which we are the most intimately acquainted.

From these observations I must decline subscribing to Mr. Hurd's theory, or circumscribing the

poet's