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Q. HORATII FLACCI

PISTOLA E

A D

PISO NES,

E T

AUGUST UM:

WITH AN ENGLISH

COMMENTARY AND NOTES:

TO WHICH ARE ADDED

CRITICAL DISSERTATIONS.

BY THE

REVEREND MR. HURD.

THE FOURTH EDITION,

CORRECTED AND ENLARGED.

VOL. III.

LONDON,

PRINTED FOR A. MILLAR, IN THE STRAND;
AND W. THURLBOURN AND J. WOODYER,
AT CAMBRIDGE. MDCCLXVI,

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DISSERTATION III.

ON

POETICAL IMITATION.

I

Undertake, in the following difcourfe, to confider Two QUESTIONS, in which the credit of almost all great writers, fince the time of Homer, is vitally concerned.

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First, "Whether that Conformity in Phraje 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 caufes, arifing from our common nature; "that is, from the exercife of our natural faculties on fuch objects as lie in common "to all obfervers.`.

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Secondly, "Whether, in the cafe of con"feffed Imitations, any certain and necessary "conclufion holds to the disadvantage of the "natural GENIUS of the imitator?"QUESTIONS, which there feems no fit meVOL. III. B thod

thod of refolving, but by taking the matter pretty deep, and deducing it from its first principles.

SECTION I.

ALL Poetry, to fpeak with Aristotle

and the Greek critics (if for fo plain a point authorities be thought wanting) is, properly, imitation. It is, indeed, the nobleft and most extenfive of the mimetic arts; having all creation for its object, and ranging the entire circuit of univerfal being. In this view every wondrous original, which ages have gazed at, as the offspring of creative fancy; and of which poets themfelves, to do honour to their inventions, have feigned, as of the immortal panoply of their heroes, that it came down from heaven, is itfelf but a copy, a tranfcript from fome brighter page of this vast volume of the universe. Thus all is derived; all is unoriginal. And the office of genius is but to felect the fairest forms of things, and to present them in due place and circumftance, and in the richest colouring of expreffion, to the imagination. This primary or original copying, which in the

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