to develope the taste of an author, the taste of a painter or a statuary? and yet we may speak of a work of taste with the fame propriety, as we do of a man of taste. It should seem therefore as if this definition went only to that denomination of tafte, which we properly call an acquired tafte; the productions of which generally end in imitation, whilst those of natural tafte bear the ftamp of originality: Another characteristic of natural taste will be fimplicity; for how can nature give more than fhe poffeffes, and what is nature but fimplicity? Now when the mind of any man is endued with a fine natural tafte, and all means of profiting by other men's ideas are out of the queftion, that taste will operate by disposing him to select the fairest fubjects out of what he fees either for art or imagination to work upon: Still his production will be marked with fimplicity; but as it is the province of tafte to separate deformity or vulgarity from what is merely fimple, fo according to the nature of his mind who poffeffes it, beauty or fublimity will be the refult of the operation: If his tafte inclines him to what is fair and elegant in nature, he will produce beauty; if to what is lofty, bold and tremendous, he will strike out fublimity.

Agreeably to this, we may obferve in all lite

rary

rary and enlightened nations, their earliest authors and artists are the most fimple: Firft, adventurers reprefent what they fee or conceive with fimplicity, because their impulfe is unbiaffed by emulation, having nothing in their fight either to imitate, avoid, or excel; on the other hand their fucceffors are fenfible, that one man's description of nature muft be like another's, and in their zeal to keep clear of imitation, and to outftrip a predeceffor, they begin to compound, refine, and even to diftort. I will refer to the Venus de Medicis and the Laocoon for an illuftration of this: I do not concern myself about the dates or fculptors of thefe figures; but in the former we see beautiful fimplicity, the fairest form in nature, selected by a fine tafte, and imitated without affectation or distortion, and as it should seem without even an effort of art: In the Laöcoon we have a complicated plot; we unravel a maze of ingenious contrivance, where the artist has compounded and diftorted Nature in the ambition of furpaffing her.

Virgil poffeffed a fine taste acccording to Mr. Addison's definition, which I before obferved applies only to an acquired tafte: He had the faculty of difcerning the beauties of an author with pleasure, and the imperfections with VOL. III, diflike:

diflike: He had alfo the faculty of imitating what he difcerned; fo that I cannot verify what I have advanced by any ftronger inftance than his. I fhould think there does not exift a poet, who has gone fuch lengths in imitation as Virgil; for to pass over his paftoral and bucolic poems, which are evidently drawn from Theocritus and Hefiod, with the affiftance of Aratus in every thing that relates to the scientific part of the figns and feafons, it is fuppofed that his whole narrative of the deftruction of Troy, with the incident of the wooden horfe and the episode of Sinon, are an almoft literal tranflation of Pifander the epic poet, who in his turn perhaps might copy his account from the Ilias Minor; (but this laft is mere fuggeftion). As for the Æneid, it does little elfe but reverfe the ́order of Homer's epic, making Æneas's voyage precede his wars in Italy, whereas the voyage of Ulyffes is fubfequent to the operations of the Iliad. As Apollo is made hoftile to the Greeks, and the cause of his offence is introduced by Homer in the opening of the Iliad, fo Juno in the Æneid ftands in his place with every cir cumftance of imitation. It would be an endlefs task to trace the various inftances throughout the Eneid, where fcarce a single incident. ean be found which is not copied from Homer:

Neither

Neither is there greater originality in the executive parts of the poem, than in the conftructive; with this difference only, that he has copied paffages from various authors, Roman as well as Greek, though from Homer the most. Amongst the Greeks, the dramatic poets Æfchylus, Sophocles, and principally Euripides, have had the greatest fhare of his attention; Arifto. phanes, Menander and other comic authors, Callimachus and fome of the lyric writers, allo may be traced in his imitations. A vaft collection of paffages from Ennius chiefly, from Lucretius, Furius, Lucilius, Pacuvius, Suevius, Nævius, Varius, Catullus, Accius and others of his own nation, has been made by Macrobius in his Saturnalia, where Virgil has done. little else but put their fentiments into more elegant verfe; fo that in strictness of speaking we may fay of the Eneid," that it is a mif"cellaneous compilation of poetical paffages,

composing all together an epic poem, formed upon the model of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey; "abounding in beautiful verfification, and juftly "to be admired for the fine acquired tafte of its

author, but devoid of originality either of -construction or execution." Befides its general inferiority as being a copy from Homer, it particularly falls off from its original in the

conception and prefervation of character: It does not reach the fublimity and majesty of its model, but it has in a great degree adopted the fimplicity, and entirely avoided the rufticity of Homer.

Lucan and Claudian in later ages were perhaps as good verfifiers as Virgil, but far inferior to him in that fine acquired tafte, which he excelled in: They are ingenious, but not fimple; and execute better than they contrive. A paffage from Claudian, which I fhall beg the reader's leave to compare with one from Virgil (where he personifies the evil paffions and plagues of mankind, and posts them at the entrance of hell, to which Æneas is descending) will exemplify what I have faid; for at the fame time that it will bear a difpute, whether Claudian's defcription is not even fuperior to Virgil's in poetical merit, yet the judicious manner of introducing it in one cafe, and the evident want of judgment in the other, will help to fhew, that the reason why we prefer Virgil to Claudian, is more on account of his fuperiority of taste than of talents.

Claudian's defcription ftands in the very front of his poem on Ruffinus; Virgil's is woven inta his fable, and will be found in the fixth book of his neid, as follows:

Vestibulum