sed at their confidence of solicitation, and gently
reproached them with their practices on the road. They heard me with
cold indifference, and showed no tokens of shame or sorrow.

"They then urged their request with the offer of a bribe; but what I
would not do for kindness, I would not do for money; and refused them,
not because they had injured me, but because I would not enable them to
injure others; for I knew they would have made use of my credit to cheat
those who should buy their wares.

"Having resided at Agra till there was no more to be learned, I
travelled into Persia, where I saw many remains of ancient magnificence,
and observed many new accommodations of life. The Persians are a nation
eminently social, and their assemblies afforded me daily opportunities
of remarking characters and manners, and of tracing human nature through
all its variations.

"From Persia I passed into Arabia, where I saw a nation at once pastoral
and warlike; who live without any settled habitation; whose only wealth
is their flocks and herds; and who have yet carried on, through all
ages, an hereditary war with all mankind, though they neither covet nor
envy their possessions."

CHAP. X.

IMLAC'S HISTORY CONTINUED. A DISSERTATION UPON POETRY.

"Wherever I went, I found that poetry was considered as the highest
learning, and regarded with a veneration, somewhat approaching to that
which man would pay to the angelick nature. And yet it fills me with
wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are
considered as the best: whether it be that every other kind of knowledge
is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at
once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a
novelty, and retained the credit by consent, which it received by
accident at first: or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe
nature and passion, which are always the same, the first writers took
possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most
probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that
followed them, but transcription of the same events, and new
combinations of the same images. Whatever be the reason, it is commonly
observed, that the early writers are in possession of nature, and their
followers of art: that the first excel in strength and invention, and
the latter in elegance and refinement.

"I was desirous to add my name to this illustrious fratern