_image_ oftener than any of the poets:

_Nam certe ex vivo centauri non fit imago,
Nulla fuit quoniam talis natura animai:
Verum ubi equi atque hominis, casu, convenit imago,
Haerescit facile extemplo,_ &c.

The same reason may also be alleged for chimeras and the rest. And
poets may be allowed the like liberty, for describing things which
really exist not, if they are founded on popular belief. Of this
nature are fairies, pigmies, and the extraordinary effects of magic;
for it is still an imitation, though of other men's fancies: and thus
are Shakespeare's "Tempest," his "Midsummer Night's Dream," and Ben
Jonson's "Masque of Witches" to be defended. For immaterial
substances, we are authorised by Scripture in their description: and
herein the text accommodates itself to vulgar apprehension, in giving
angels the likeness of beautiful young men. Thus, after the pagan
divinity, has Homer drawn his gods with human faces: and thus we have
notions of things above us, by describing them like other beings more
within our knowledge.

I wish I could produce any one example of excellent imaging in all
this poem. Perhaps I cannot; but that which comes nearest it, is in
these four lines, which have been sufficiently canvassed by my
well-natured censors:

Seraph and cherub, careless of their charge,
And wanton, in full ease now live at large:
Unguarded leave the passes of the sky,
And all dissolved in hallelujahs lie.

I have heard (says one of them) of anchovies _dissolved_ in sauce; but
never of an angel _in hallelujahs._ A mighty witticism! (if you will
pardon a new word,) but there is some difference between a laugher and
a critic. He might have burlesqued Virgil too, from whom I took the
image. _Invadunt urbem, somno vinoque sepultam._ A city's being
buried, is just as proper on occasion, as an angel's being dissolved
in ease, and songs of triumph. Mr Cowley lies as open too in many
places:

Where their vast courts the mother waters keep, &c.

For if the mass of waters be the mothers, then their daughters, the
little streams, are bound, in all good manners, to make courtesy to
them, and ask them blessing. How easy it is to turn into ridicule the
best descriptions, when once a man is in the humour of laughing, till
he wheezes at his own dull jest! but an image, which is strongly and
beautifully set before the eyes of the reader, will still be poetry,
when the merry fit is over, and last when the ot