hian by its acanthus.

What distinguishes oratory from a cold narration, is a more liberal
though chaste use of these ornaments which go under the name of
figurative and metaphorical expressions; and poetry distinguishes itself
from oratory by words and expressions still more ardent and glowing. What
separates and distinguishes poetry is more particularly the ornament of
_verse_; it is this which gives it its character, and is an essential,
without which it cannot exist. Custom has appropriated different metre
to different kinds of composition, in which the world is not perfectly
agreed. In England the dispute is not yet settled which is to be
preferred, rhyme or blank verse. But however we disagree about what
these metrical ornaments shall be, that some metre is essentially
necessary is universally acknowledged.

In poetry or eloquence, to determine how far figurative or metaphorical
language may proceed, and when it begins to be affectation or beside the
truth, must be determined by taste, though this taste we must never
forget is regulated and formed by the presiding feelings of mankind, by
those works which have approved themselves to all times and all persons.

Thus, though eloquence has undoubtedly an essential and intrinsic
excellence, and immovable principles common to all languages, founded in
the nature of our passions and affections, yet it has its ornaments and
modes of address which are merely arbitrary. What is approved in the
Eastern nations as grand and majestic, would be considered by the Greeks
and Romans as turgid and inflated; and they, in return, would be thought
by the Orientals to express themselves in a cold and insipid manner.

We may add likewise to the credit of ornaments, that it is by their means
that art itself accomplishes its purpose. Fresnoy calls colouring, which
is one of the chief ornaments of painting, _lena sororis_, that which
procures lovers and admirers to the more valuable excellences of the art.

It appears to be the same right turn of mind which enables a man to
acquire the _truth_, or the just idea of what is right in the ornaments,
as in the more stable principles of art. It has still the same centre of
perfection, though it is the centre of a smaller circle.

To illustrate this by the fashion of dress, in which there is allowed to
be a good or, bad taste. The component parts of dress are continually
changing from great to little, from short to long, but the gene