mitates, is consequently become an unlimited representation of every species and mode of being. Yet as their primary intention was only to express the objects of imagination, and as they still abound chiefly in ideas of that class, they of course retain their original character, and all the different pleasures they excite, are term'd, in general, Pleasures of Imagination.
The design of the following poem is to give a view of these, in the largest acceptation of the term; so that whatever our imagination feels from the agreeable appearances of nature, and all the various entertainment we meet with either in poetry, painting, music, or any of the elegant arts, might be deducible from one or other of those principles in the constitution of the human mind, which are here establish'd and explain'd.
In executing this general plan it was necessary first of all to distinguish the imagination from our other faculties, and then to characterize those original forms or properties of being about which it is conversant, and which are by nature adapted to it, as light is to the eyes, or truth to the understanding. These properties Mr. Addison had reduc'd to the three general classes of greatness, novelty, and beauty; and into these we may annalyse every object, however complex, which, properly speaking, is delightful to the imagination, But such an object may also include many other sources of pleasure, and its beauty, or novelty or grandeur, will make a stronger impression by reason of this concurrence. Besides this, the imitative arts, especially poetry, owe much of
