This foregoing remark, which gives the reason why imitation pleases, was sent me by Mr Walter Moyle, a most ingenious young gentleman, conversant in all the studies of humanity much above his years. He had also furnished me, according to my request, with all the particular passages in Aristotle and Horace, which are used by them to explain the art of poetry by that of painting; which, if ever I have time to retouch this Essay, shall be inserted in their places. Having thus shewn that imitation pleases, and why it pleases in both these arts, it follows, that some rules of imitation are necessary to obtain the end; for without rules there can be no art, any more than there can be a house without a door to conduct you into it. The principal parts of painting and poetry next follow. Invention is the first part, and absolutely necessary to them both; yet no rule ever was or ever can be given, how to compass it. A happy genius is the gift of nature: it depends on the influence of the stars, say the astrologers; on the organs of the body, say the naturalists; it is the particular gift of heaven, say the divines, both Christians and heathens. How to improve it, many books can teach us; how to obtain it, none; that nothing can be done without it, all agree: _Tu nihil invitâ dices faciesve Minervâ._ Without invention, a painter is but a copier, and a poet but a plagiary of others. Both are allowed sometimes to copy, and translate; but, as our author tells you, that is not the best part of their reputation. “Imitators are but a servile kind of cattle,” says the poet; or at best, the keepers of cattle for other men: they have nothing which is properly their own: that is a sufficient mortification for me, while I am translating Virgil. But to copy the best author, is a kind of praise, if I perform it as I ought; as a copy after Raffaelle is more to be commended than an original of any indifferent painter. Under this head of _Invention_ is placed the disposition of the work,—to put all things in a beautiful order and harmony, that the whole may be of a piece. The compositions of the painter should be conformable to the text of ancient authors, to the customs, and the times. And this is exactly the same in poetry; Homer and Virgil are to be our guides in the epic; Sophocles and Euripides in tragedy: in all things we are to imitate the customs and the times of those persons and things which we represent: not to make new rules of the drama, as Lopez de Vega has attempted unsuccessfully to do,[126] but to be content to follow our masters, who understood nature better than we. But if the story which we treat be modern, we are to vary the customs, according to the time and the country where the scene of action lies; for this is still to imitate nature, which is always the same, though in a different dress.