injure others; for I knew they would have made ufe of my credit to cheat those who fhould buy their

wares.

"Having refided at Agra till there was no more to be learned, I travelled into Perfia, where I faw many remains of ancient magnificence, and obferved many new accommodations of life. The Perfians are a nation eminently focial, and their affemblies afforded me daily opportunities of remarking characters and manners, and of tracing human nature through all its variations,

"From Perfia I paffed into Arabia, where I faw a nation at once paftoral and warlike; who live without any settled habitation; whofe only wealth is their flocks and herds; and who have yet carried on, through all ages, an hereditary war with all mankind, though they neither covet nor envy their poffeffions.

CHAP. X.

IMLAC'S HISTORY CONTINUED. A DISSERTATION UPON

POETRY.

WHEREVER I went, I found that

Poetry was confidered as the highest learning, and regarded with a veneration fomewhat approaching to that which man would pay to the Angelick Nature. And yet it fills me with wonder, that, in almoft all countries, the most ancient poets are confidered as the best whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquifition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprifed them as a novelty," and retained the credit by confent which it received by accident at first: or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe

Nature

Nature and Paffion, which are always the fame, the firft writers took poffeffion of the most striking objects for defcrip. tion, and the moft probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to thofe that followed them, but tranf cription of the fame events, and new combinations of the fame images. Whatever be the reafon, it is commonly obferved that the early writers are in poffeffion of nature, and their followers of art: that the firft excel in strength and invention, and the latter in elegance and refinement.

"I was defirous to add my name to this illuftrious fraternity. I read all the poets of Perfia and Arabia, and was able to repeat by memory the volumes that are fufpended in the mofque of Mecca.. But I foon found that no man was ever great by imitation. My defire of excellence impelled me to transfer my attention to nature and to life. Nature was to be my fubject, and men to be my auditors: I could never describe what I had

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had not feen: I could not hope to move those with delight or terrour, whose inte refts and opinions I did not understand.

"Being now refolved to be a poet, I faw every thing with a new purpose; my fphere of attention was fuddenly magnified: no kind of knowledge was to be overlooked. I ranged mountains and defarts for images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind every tree of the foreft and flower of the valley. I obferved with equal care the crags of the rock and the pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes I wandered along the mazes of the rivulet, and fometimes watched the changes of the fummer clouds. To a poet nothing can be useless. Whatever is beautiful, and whatever is dreadful, must be familiar to his imagination: he must be converfant with all that is awfully vaft or elegantly little. The plants of the garden, the animals of the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the fky, muft all concur

to

to ftore his mind with inexhaustible va-, riety for every idea is ufeful for the enforcement or decoration of moral or religious truth; and he, who knows moft, will have moft power of diversi fying his fcenes, and of gratifying his reader with remote allufions and unexpected instruction, unlzeme

"All the appearances of nature I was therefore careful to ftudy, and every country which I have furveyed has contributed fomething to my poe tical powers."

"In fo wide a furvey, faid the prince, you must furely have left much unobferved. I have lived, till now, within the circuit of thefe mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad without the fight of something which I had never beheld before', or never heeded."

་

"The bufinefs of a poet, faid Imlac, is to examine, not the individual, but the fpecies; to remark geD: 5

neral