was originally undertaken solely at the request of a friend, and he who performed it has therefore no right to look elsewhere for his reward; while, since the prospect of pecuniary gain has never presented itself, all disappointment on that score is prevented. His only source of anxiety is lest continued ill health and the distractions of business should have prevented him from fulfilling the office devolved on him, in a befitting manner, and doing justice to this essay by clothing it in a dress worthy its high merits. Be this as it may, he feels proud of having been the channel through which it reaches the British Public, and sincerely hopes that his own imperfections may prove no bar to its success. It is without a wish to curry indulgence for himself, that he would fain intreat those who hold the keys of popular favour to exercise the power they are invested with towards the promotion of that success.

LEVANT LODGE,

Oct. 1836.

OF THE NATURE OF IMITATION IN THE FINE ARTS.

CHAPTER I.-Definition of the elementary princi-

ple of imitation in the fine arts.

CHAPTER II.-Of the idea to be formed concerning

resemblance in the imitation proper to the fine

arts

CHAPTER III.—That the resemblance which it

belongs to every art to produce can only be a

partial one

CHAPTER IV.-The consequences drawn from the

foregoing definition and ideas are equally appli-

cable to poetry as to painting

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24

31

Page

CHAPTER V.-Nature has placed separations as

real, between the arts of poetry, as between those

of design:-

PROOF THE FIRST;

Drawn from the diversity of the faculties of the

mind, and of the qualities of the objects

available for imitation

CHAPTER VI.-Continuation of the same subject:-

PROOF THE SECOND;

Drawn from the principle of unity in the mind,

and from the unity of its action, from which

results the principle of imitative unity, and

from this again the separations established

between all the arts

CHAPTER VII.-Of unity and variety in imitation.

Of the false notions arising from a misconception

of those words

CHAPTER VIII.-Concerning the nature and spirit

of the unions formed of several arts when they

are collectively employed about a work in common

CHAPTER IX.-Of the erroneous means by which,

employed through a desire of completing or in-

creasing the imitative truth of every art, that

truth is destroyed :-

FIRST ERROR OF THE ARTIST;

It consists in stepping beyond his own art to

seek, in the resources of another, an increase

of imitative resemblance

Page

CHAPTER X.-Continuation of the same subject:

SECOND ERROR OF THE ARTIST;

It consists in seeking truth short of the limits

of every art, by a system of servile copy,

which deprives the imitation, or the image,

of that fictious part which constitutes at

once its essence and its character

CHAPTER XI.-In every art there must be, with

respect to truth, some fiction, and with respect to

resemblance, something incomplete

CHAPTER XII.-It is the fictious and the incom-

plete in every art, and these alone, which consti-

tute art, and become moreover the sources of the

pleasure of imitation

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102

. 113

. 121

CHAPTER XIII.-In what manner and by what

means art is enabled to correct the fictious, and to

compensate the incomplete necessarily inherent in it 128

CHAPTER XIV. Of illusion in the works of imi-

tation

CHAPTER XV.-The pleasure of imitation is pro-

portionate to the distance which, in every art or

imitative mode, and in the works of each, sepa-

rates the elements of the model from those of the

image

CHAPTER XVI.--The comparative rank assigned

by common opinion to the different arts seems to

be confirmed by this theory, and, in turn, con-

firms it

. 136

. 156

164