ARGUMENT.

THE pleasure of obferving the tempers and manners of men, even where vicious or abfurd. The origin of vice, from falfe reprefentations of the fancy, producing false opinions concerning good and evil. Inquiry into ridicule. The general fources of ridicule in the minds and characters of men, enumerated. Final caufe of the fenfe of ridicule. The refemblance of certain aspects of inanimate things to the fenfations and properties of the mind. The operations of the mind in the production of the works of the imagination, described. The fecondary pleasure from imitation. The benevolent order of the world illuftrated in the arbitrary connection of these pleasures with the objects which excite them. The nature and conduct of tafte. Concluding with an account of the natural and moral advantages refulting from a fenfible and well-formed imagination.

THE

PLEASURES

OF

IMAGINATION.

BOOK III.

WHAT wonder therefore, fince the endearing ties

Of paffion link the univerfal kind

Of man so close, what wonder if to search
This common nature thro' the various change
Of fex, and age, and fortune, and the frame
Of each peculiar, draw the bufy mind.
With unrefifted charms? The fpacious weft,
And all the teeming regions of the south
Hold not a quarry, to the curious flight

Of knowledge half so tempting or so fair,

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As man to man.

Nor only where the smiles

Of love invite; nor only where the applause
Of cordial honour turns the attentive eye

For fince the course

On Virtue's graceful deeds.
Of things external acts in different ways
On human apprehenfions, as the hand

Of nature temper'd to a different frame
Peculiar minds; so haply where the powers
Of Fancy neither leffen nor enlarge

The images of things, but paint in all

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Their genuine hues, the features which they wore

In nature; there opinion will be true,

And action right. For action treads the path

In which opinion fays he follows good,

Or flies from evil; and opinion gives

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Report of good or evil, as the fcene

Was drawn by Fancy, lovely or deform'd :
Thus her report can never there be true
Where Fancy cheats the intellectual eye,
With glaring colours and distorted lines.

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Is there a man, who at the found of death
Sees ghaftly shapes of terror conjur'd up,

And black before him; nought but death-bed groans And fearful prayers, and plunging from the brink

Of light and being, down the gloomy air

An unknown depth? Alas! in such a mind

If no bright forms of excellence attend

The image of his country; nor the pomp

Of facred fenates, nor the guardian voice

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Of juftice on her throne, nor aught that wakes 40

The conscious bosom with a patriot's flame;

Will not Opinion tell him, that to die,

Or ftand the hazard, is a greater ill

Than to betray his country? And in act

Will he not choose to be a wretch, and live? 45
Here vice begins then. From the enchanting cup
Which Fancy holds to all, the unwary thirst
Of youth oft swallows a Circéan draught,
That sheds a baneful tincture o'er the eye

Of reafon, till no longer he difcerns,

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