Essays

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: thorough acquaintance with all the moral philofo phy ip the world would not have enabled Black- more to paint fuch a perfonage as Homer's A chilles, Shakefpeare's Othello, or the Satan of Paradife Loft. To a competency of moral fciencc, there muft be added an extenfive knowledge of mankind, a warm. and...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: thorough acquaintance with all the moral philofo phy ip the world would not have enabled Black- more to paint fuch a perfonage as Homer's A chilles, Shakefpeare's Othello, or the Satan of Paradife Loft. To a competency of moral fciencc, there muft be added an extenfive knowledge of mankind, a warm. and elevated imagination, and rhe greateft fenfibility of heart, before a gen: Js can be formed equal to fo difficult a taik. Horace is indeed fo fenfible of the danger of introducing a new character in poetry, that he even difcourages the attempt, and advifes the poet rather to take his perfons from the ancient authors, or from tradition . To conceive the idea of a good man, and to invent and fupport a great poetical character, are two very different things, however they may feem to have been confounded by fome writers. The firft is eafy to any perfon fufficiently inftructed in the duties of life; the laft is perhaps of all the efforts of human genius the mod difficult; fo very difficult, that, though attempted by many, Homer, Shakefpeare, and Milton, are almoft the only au thors who have fucceedcd in it. But characters of perfect virtue are not the moft proper .for poetry. It feems to be agreed, that the Deity mould not be introduced in the machinery of a poetical fable. To afcribe to him words and actions of our own invention, is in my judgment very unbecoming; nor can a poetical dcicription, that is known to be, and muft of neceffity be, infinitely inadequate, evef tfor, Ar. Poet. verf. 119.?130, F fatlsfyfatisfy the human mind . Poetry, according to the beft critics, is an imitation of human action; and therefore poetical characters, though elevated, fhould ftill partake of the paffions and frailties of humanity. If it were not for the vices of fotne principal perfonag...