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النشر الإلكتروني

Nature: material objects; general

notions;

abstracted truths.

Nature.

Reason.

IMITATION OF NATURE

NATURE DEFINED

By Nature I do not only mean all sorts of material objects and every species of substance whatsoever, but also general notions and abstracted truths, such as exist only in the minds of men and in the property and relation of things one to another.

R. WOLSELEY, Preface to Valentinian, 1685. Nature, taken in a stricter sense, is nothing but that rule and order and harmony which we find in the visible Creation. . . . As Nature is order and rule and harmony in the visible world, so Reason is the very same throughout the invisible Creation.

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Nature: the known

and experi

Nature and Reason

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J. DENNIS, Advancement of Modern Poetry, 1701.

A poet they say must follow nature: and by nature, we are to suppose, can only be meant the known and

enced course experienced course of affairs in this world.

of affairs in this world.

Nature:

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R. HURD, Letters on Chivalry and Romance, 1762. Nature is the poet's goddess; but by nature, no one rightly understands her mere inanimate face however charming it may be—or the simple landscape painting of trees, clouds, precipices, and flowers. Nature, in the life in all its wide and proper sense of the word, means life in all its circumstances-nature moral as well as external. As the nature moral subject of inspired fiction, nature includes artificial forms and manners. Richardson is no less a painter of nature than Homer.

circum

stances

as well as

external.

T. CAMPBELL, Essay on English Poetry, 1819.

TRUTH TO NATURE

There is not so great a lie to be found in any poet as the vulgar conceit of men that lying is essential to good

poetry.

A. COWLEY, Preface to Poems, 1656.

Lying not good poetry.

essential to

The mind

[T]he mind of man does naturally tend to and seek after truth; and therefore the nearer anything comes to naturally the imitation of it, the more it pleases.

J. DRYDEN, Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 1668.

To imitate Nature well in whatsoever subject is the perfection of both arts; and that picture, and that poem, which comes nearest to the resemblance of Nature, is the best. But it follows not, that what pleases most in either kind is therefore good, but what ought to please.

seeks after truth.

The poem nearest to the resemblance the best.

which comes

of nature is

Poetry the imitation of

imitatio nature, of wrought up

that which is

to a nobler pitch.

J. DRYDEN, A Parallel of Poetry and Painting, 1695. [Poetry and Painting] are not only true imitations of Nature, but of the best Nature, of that which is wrought up to a nobler pitch. They present us with images more perfect than the life in any individual; and we have the pleasure to see all the scattered beauties of Nature united by a happy chemistry, without its deformities or faults. Scattered They are imitations of the passions, which always move, nature and therefore consequently please; for without motion united by a there can be no delight, which cannot be considered but chemistry. as an active passion. When we view these elevated ideas of Nature, the result of that view is admiration, which is always the cause of pleasure.

J. DRYDEN, A Parallel of Poetry and Painting, 1695. Comedy presents us with the imperfections of human nature: Farce entertains us with what is monstrous and chimerical. The one causes laughter in those who can judge of men and manners, by the lively representation of their folly or corruption: the other produces the same effect in those who can judge of neither, and that only by its extravagances. The first works on the judgment and

beauties of

happy

Comedy and imperfec

farce :

tions of human

nature;

monstrous

and

chimerical.

Tragedy.
Reason and

nature.

Use mistaken for nature.

fancy; the latter on the fancy only: there is more of satisfaction in the former kind of laughter, and in the latter more of scorn. . . [T]o write unnatural things is the most probable way of pleasing them, who understand not Nature. And a true poet often misses of applause, because he cannot debase himself to write so ill as to please his audience.

J. DRYDEN, Preface to an Evening's Love, 1671.

In framing a character for tragedy, a poet is not to leave his reason, and blindly abandon himself to follow fancy, for then his fancy might be monstrous, might be singular, and please no body's maggot but his own; but reason is to be his guide, reason is common to all people, and can never carry him from what is natural.

Many are apt to mistake use for nature, but a poet is not to be an historiographer, but a philosopher; he is not The poet not to take nature at the second hand, soiled and deformed as grapher buta it passes in the customs of the unthinking vulgar. philosopher.

an historio

Things

naturally

unpleasant

well imi

tated.

T. RYMER, Tragedies of the Last Age, 1678.

[The ancients] knew . . . that many things naturally unpleasant to the world in themselves, yet gave delight delight when when well imitated. These they considered as the picture of some deformed old woman, that might cause laughter some light, superficial, and comical pleasure, but never to be endured on serious occasions, where the attention of the mind and where the heart was engaged.

Nothing in
Nature great

or

Ib.

There is nothing in Nature that is great and beautiful, and beautiful without rule and order; I . . . conceive that it is the without rule same in art, and particularly in poetry, which ought to be

and order.

and harmony.

an exact imitation of Nature.

Now Nature, taken in a that rule and order and visible Creation. . . . As

Rule, order stricter sense, is nothing but harmony which we find in the Nature is order and rule and harmony in the visible world, so Reason is the very same throughout the invisible Creation. For Reason is order and the result of order.

Reason is order.

And nothing that is irregular, so far as it is irregular, ever Nothing was or ever can be either natural or reasonable. .

irregular can be natural or

Reason pre

But as both Nature and Reason, which two in a larger reasonable. acceptation is Nature, owe their greatness, their beauty, their majesty, to their perpetual order; . . . so poetry, which is an imitation of Nature, must do the same thing. It can neither have greatness or real beauty, if it swerves from the laws which Reason severely prescribes it. . . . But, as in some of the numberless parts which constitute scribes laws this beauteous All, there are some appearing irregularities, which parts notwithstanding contribute with the rest to complete the harmony of universal Nature; and as there are some seeming irregularities even in the wonderful dispensations of the supreme and sovereign Reason,

for poetry.

so, if we may compare great things with small, in the creation of the accomplished poem, some things may at first sight be seemingly against reason, which yet at the Things seembottom are perfectly regular, because they are indispensably ingly against necessary to the admirable conduct of a great and a just be regular. design.

J. DENNIS, Advancement of Modern Poetry, 1701.

First follow Nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same:
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchang'd, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
Art from that fund each just supply provides,
Works without show, and without pomp presides:
In some fair body thus th' informing soul
With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole,
Each motion guides, and ev'ry nerve sustains;
Itself unseen, but in th' effects remains.

A. POPE, Essay on Criticism, 1711.

reason may

Follow
Nature.

words.

Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, Force of that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves. The reader finds a scene

The poet heightens the beauty of nature.

The Greeks, Romans, and Dante described all objects.

Nature of

heroic poetry consists in the due

drawn in stronger colours, and painted more to the life in his imagination, than by an actual survey of the scene which they describe. In this case the poet seems to get the better of nature; he takes, indeed, the landscape after her, but gives it more vigorous touches, heightens its beauty, and so enlivens the whole piece, that the images which flow from the objects themselves appear weak and faint, in comparison of those that come from the expressions. The reason, probably, may be, because in the survey of any object we have only so much of it painted on the imagination, as comes in at the eye; but in its description, the poet gives us as free a view of it as he pleases, and discovers to us several parts, that either we did not attend to, or that lay out of our sight when we first beheld it. As we look on any object, our idea of it is, perhaps, made up of two or three simple ideas; but when the poet represents it, he may either give us a more complex idea of it, or only raise in us such ideas as are most apt to affect the imagination.

J. ADDISON, Spectator (No. 416), 1712.

Voltaire observes truly: "Les Grecs et les Latins employèrent d'abord la poésie à peindre les objets sensibles de toute la nature. Homère exprime tout ce qui frappe les yeux les Français, qui n'ont guère commencé à perfectionner la grande poésie qu'au théâtre, n'ont pu et n'ont dû exprimer alors que ce qui peut toucher l'âme. Nous nous sommes interdit nous-mêmes insensiblement presque tous les objets que d'autres nations ont osé prendre. Il n'est rien que le Dante n'exprimât, à l'exemple des anciens il accoutuma les Italiens à tout dire. Mais nous, comment pourrions-nous aujourd'hui imiter l'auteur des Géorgiques, qui nomme sans détour tous les instruments de l'agriculture ?"

After all, may we not ask, does not the nature of heroic poetry consist in a due selection of objects? Are not selection of importance and dignity its essential properties? Is it not its immediate province to separate high from low, fair from

objects.

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