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Article DISSERTATIONS ON THE POLITE ARTS. No. II. ← Page 2 of 5 →
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Dissertations On The Polite Arts. No. Ii.
sation ; but it is not properly in those respects that they are called arts . They may also wander , one into little caprices , ' where the sounds break upon one another with desi gn ; the other into leaps and fantastic capers : but neither the one nor the other are then in their just bounds . To be what they ought to be , they must return to imitation , and become the artificial portrait of the human passions . Fiction
, finally , is the very life and soul of poetry . In this art the wolf bears all the characters of man powerful and unjust ; the lamb those of innocenee oppressed . Pastoral offers us poetical shepherds , which are mere resemblances or images . Comedy draws the picture of an ideal miser , on whom all the characters ' of real avarice are bestowed .
Tragedy is not properly poetry but in that which it fei gns by imitation . CaDsar has had a quarrel with Pompey , this is not poetry , hut history . But if actions ' , discourses , intrigues , are invented , till alter the ideas which history gives us cf the characters and fortune of Casar and Pompey , this is what may be called poetry , because it is the work of genius and art . ' ' .
The epic , top , is only a recital of probable actions , represented with all the characters of existence . Juno and . / Eneas neither said iior did what Virgil attributes to them ; ' but they might have said or done it , and that is enough for poetry . It is one perpetual " fiction , graced with all the characters of truth . ' Thus every art , in all that is truly artificial in itis onl-an
ima-, y ginary thing , a feigned being , copied and imitated from true ones . It is for this reason that art is always put in opposition to nature ; that we hear it every where said , that we must imitate nature ; that art is perfect . when she is well represented ; ' and , in short , that all master-pieces of art are those where nature is so well imitated that thev seem nature herself .
And this imitation , for which we have all so natural a disposition ( since it is example which instructs and governs mankind , vivhnus ad exempla ) , is One of the principal springs of that pleasure which we derive from arts . The mind exercises itself in comparing the model with the picture ; and the judgment it gives is so much' the more agreeable , as it is a proof of its own knowledge and penetration . Genius and taste have so intimate a connection in artsthat there
, are cases where they cannot he united without seeming to confound one another , nor separated without almost taking away their functions . This is the . case here , where it is impossible- to say -what a genius ought to do in imitating nature , without supposing taste to be his guide . Aristotlecompares poetry with historytheir differenceaccording
, ; , to him , is not in the form , or . stile , but in the very nature ' of the things . But how so ? History only paints what bus happened , poetry what might have happened . One is tied down to truth , it creates neither actions nor actors . The other regards nothing but the pro-, bable ; it invents ; it designs at its own pleasure , and paints only
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Dissertations On The Polite Arts. No. Ii.
sation ; but it is not properly in those respects that they are called arts . They may also wander , one into little caprices , ' where the sounds break upon one another with desi gn ; the other into leaps and fantastic capers : but neither the one nor the other are then in their just bounds . To be what they ought to be , they must return to imitation , and become the artificial portrait of the human passions . Fiction
, finally , is the very life and soul of poetry . In this art the wolf bears all the characters of man powerful and unjust ; the lamb those of innocenee oppressed . Pastoral offers us poetical shepherds , which are mere resemblances or images . Comedy draws the picture of an ideal miser , on whom all the characters ' of real avarice are bestowed .
Tragedy is not properly poetry but in that which it fei gns by imitation . CaDsar has had a quarrel with Pompey , this is not poetry , hut history . But if actions ' , discourses , intrigues , are invented , till alter the ideas which history gives us cf the characters and fortune of Casar and Pompey , this is what may be called poetry , because it is the work of genius and art . ' ' .
The epic , top , is only a recital of probable actions , represented with all the characters of existence . Juno and . / Eneas neither said iior did what Virgil attributes to them ; ' but they might have said or done it , and that is enough for poetry . It is one perpetual " fiction , graced with all the characters of truth . ' Thus every art , in all that is truly artificial in itis onl-an
ima-, y ginary thing , a feigned being , copied and imitated from true ones . It is for this reason that art is always put in opposition to nature ; that we hear it every where said , that we must imitate nature ; that art is perfect . when she is well represented ; ' and , in short , that all master-pieces of art are those where nature is so well imitated that thev seem nature herself .
And this imitation , for which we have all so natural a disposition ( since it is example which instructs and governs mankind , vivhnus ad exempla ) , is One of the principal springs of that pleasure which we derive from arts . The mind exercises itself in comparing the model with the picture ; and the judgment it gives is so much' the more agreeable , as it is a proof of its own knowledge and penetration . Genius and taste have so intimate a connection in artsthat there
, are cases where they cannot he united without seeming to confound one another , nor separated without almost taking away their functions . This is the . case here , where it is impossible- to say -what a genius ought to do in imitating nature , without supposing taste to be his guide . Aristotlecompares poetry with historytheir differenceaccording
, ; , to him , is not in the form , or . stile , but in the very nature ' of the things . But how so ? History only paints what bus happened , poetry what might have happened . One is tied down to truth , it creates neither actions nor actors . The other regards nothing but the pro-, bable ; it invents ; it designs at its own pleasure , and paints only