In considering the beautiful works of the ancients, in which the ideal style is so predominant, we become convinced, not only that they are not the isolated imitations of any individual in particular, but they prove to us that neither are they the material and collective imitations of parts absolutely borrowed from several individuals. An artist copying with strict reality, and so composing a figure formed from the dismemberment of several actual models, would in no wise produce a generalized imitation, but would only make a collection of individualities.

In fine, have those who imagine that they can explain ideal imitation in the arts of design by the notion of an absolute union of individual parts, previously chosen and faithfully expressed, have they seen the full extent of their theory? Have they taken account of the parts which would require to be chosen, with due relation to the style of the figure, and which must afterwards be united? The number of the parts of the human body, as already mentioned, are, so to speak, infinite. Every principal part is composed of lesser parts, which again include others still less; so that it is impossible to see where, in this operation, taken in its absolute and practical sense, the act of choosing and uniting would termi

nate.

We come then to the conclusion that the ideal in imitation consists especially in that the works

wherein it resides are not, and cannot be, either the expression of any individual, of any object in particular, nor the union, positively understood, of parts of different objects or individuals.

And, again, that the notions of a choice and union are truly abstract, that the words expressive of them are but figurative expressions of an operation of the understanding, which in this, as in all other cases, necessarily employs the intervention of the

senses.

Hence too, the error in straining the explanation either one way or the other. For, as it would be absurd to maintain that the senses go for nothing in estimating the relations and drawing the parallels requisite to the act of generalizing, so it would be unreasonable to deny the agency of the intellectual and moral faculties, admitting no other agents than the senses and no other combinations than those of a material and physical order.

CHAPTER VII.

OF THE ACT OF TRANSFORMING OR TRANSPOSING CONSIDERED AS A MEANS OF IDEAL IMITATION, BOTH IN THE INVENTIONS OF POETRY AND THE FORMS OF ITS LANGUAGE.

IT has been seen that in order to withdraw the objects and subjects that imitation has to do with, from the region of vulgar realities, and to elevate them into those of the ideal, the poet and the artist are alike under the obligation of recomposing them. (See Chap. iii.)

We have shown that the first means for bringing about this recomposition is the exchanging the particular form and existence of things for a generalized form and existence, and also that the accustomed phrases by which the artist's manner of proceeding in order to attain the ideal are pretended to be defined, are merely figurative expressions purporting to explain, in a more sensible manner, the generalizing operation of the understanding.

In taking account of the act of generalizing, understood as a means adapted for recomposing

the objects and subjects of imitation, one cannot but perceive that this act is intimately linked in with that of transforming or transposing. There is nevertheless a very essential difference between them. In truth, though whatever is generalized undergoes a sort of transformation, yet all that is transformed, is not therefore necessarily generalized; for, the form of an object may also be changed by passing from the order of general images or ideas, to that of particular images or ideas.

Moreover, the act of generalizing seems to be applicable solely to that which constitutes the very nature of beings, the essence of things, the character of persons; in short, to that which changes or modifies them in their individuality; while the act of transforming or transposing embraces, in the operations of the artist who aspires to the ideal, both a greater diversity of points of view and a much greater number of relations. Such, for instance, are all those changes that belong to the composition of subjects, resulting from the accessaries that are conjoined with their personages by associating with them fictious or allegorical beings, and all those imaginative combinations whose effect doubtless contributes to generalize the objects of imitation, though by modes of proceeding wholly distinct, and which it is for theoretical analysis to develope separately.

This second means of recomposition, which may

be termed metaphorical, will give us occasion to pass in review a much greater number of critical observations, and customary modes of procedure, and those of a much less abstract nature.

We may premise that poetry is nothing more than the art of transforming all objects by the manner in which they are represented, of transforming the ideas attached to those objects and even the elements of the language which expresses those ideas. Poetry, in the sense of its etymology, is synonymous with fiction, and fiction is at bottom but a means of transposition. For as man is incapable of creating otherwise than by effecting new combinations, one cannot under any form of composition whatever, bring two things together which were previously not so, without transferring the one or the other and sometimes both.

The creations that belong to the epic poem consist almost always in the transpositions which the poet makes of his personages, their circumstances, and their actions. The marvellous belongs properly to this kind of poetry, the most essentially metaphorical of all, because it is the most powerful and most active engine for effecting those transpositions which the subject of the poem must undergo.

As the action of such subject is diverted into a channel altogether different from that of human affairs in their ordinary course by the intervention of supernatural powers, it is absolutely necessary