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 fettled 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.

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Imlac's history continued. A dif fertation upon poetry.

W

HEREVER I went, 1 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 it yet fills me with wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are confidered as the best: whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as

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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 and Paffion, which are always the fame, the first writers took poffeffion of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to thofe that followed them, but transcription of the fame events, and new combinations of the fame images. Whatever be the reason, it is commonly obferved that the early writers are in poffeffion of nature, and their followers of art: that the first 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

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

"Being now refolved to be a poet, I faw every thing with a new purpose; my sphere of attention was fuddenly magnified: no kind of knowledge was to be overlooked. I ranged mountains and deferts for images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind every tree of the foreft and flower of the valley. I obferved with equal

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care

care the crags of the rock and the pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes I wandered along the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes 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 sky, must all concur to fore his mind with inexhauftible variety for every idea is useful for the inforcement or decoration of moral or religious truth; and he, who knows most, will have most power of diverfifying his scenes, and of gratifying his reader with remote allufions and unexpected inftruc

tion.

"All

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