ir mythology. When a hero is to be transported
from one place to another, across pathless wastes, is any vehicle so
natural, as one of the fleecy clouds on which the poet has often gazed,
scarcely conscious that he wished to make it his chariot? Again, when
nature seems to present obstacles to his progress at almost every step,
when the tangled forest and steep mountain stand as barriers, to pass
over which the mind longs for supernatural aid; an interposing deity, who
walks on the waves, and rules the storm, severely felt in the first
attempts to cultivate a country, will receive from the impassioned fancy
"a local habitation and a name."

It would be a philosophical enquiry, and throw some light on the history
of the human mind, to trace, as far as our information will allow us to
trace, the spontaneous feelings and ideas which have produced the images
that now frequently appear unnatural, because they are remote; and
disgusting, because they have been servilely copied by poets, whose
habits of thinking, and views of nature must have been different; for,
though the understanding seldom disturbs the current of our present
feelings, without dissipating the gay clouds which fancy has been
embracing, yet it silently gives the colour to the whole tenour of them,
and the dream is over, when truth is grossly violated, or images
introduced, selected from books, and not from local manners or popular
prejudices.

In a more advanced state of civilization, a poet is rather the creature
of art, than of nature. The books that he reads in his youth, become a
hot-bed in which artificial fruits are produced, beautiful to the common
eye, though they want the true hue and flavour. His images do not arise
from sensations; they are copies; and, like the works of the painters who
copy ancient statues when they draw men and women of their own times, we
acknowledge that the features are fine, and the proportions just; yet
they are men of stone; insipid figures, that never convey to the mind the
idea of a portrait taken from life, where the soul gives spirit and
homogeneity to the whole. The silken wings of fancy are shrivelled by
rules; and a desire of attaining elegance of diction, occasions an
attention to words, incompatible with sublime, impassioned thoughts.

A boy of abilities, who has been taught the structure of verse at school,
and been roused by emulation to compose rhymes whilst he was reading
works of genius, may, by practice,