ON THE PRÆTERNATURAL BEING S. The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heav'n to earth, from earth to heav'n, The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Midfummer Night's Dream. ΟΝ ΤΗΕ PRETERNATURAL BEINGS. A S the genius of Shakespear, through the whole extent of the poet's province, is the object of our enquiry, we fhould do him great injustice, if we did not attend to his peculiar felicity, in those fictions and inventions, from which poetry derives its highest distinction, and from whence it firft affumed its pretenfions to divine inspiration, and appeared the affociate of religion. The ancient poet was admitted into the fynod of the Gods: he discoursed of their natures, he repeated their counfels, and, without the charge of impiety or presumption, disclosed their diffenfions, and published their vices. He peopled the woods with nymphs, 13 nymphs, the rivers with deities; and, that he might still have fome being within call to his affistance, he placed refponfive echo in the vacant regions of air. In the infant ages of the world, the credulity of ignorance greedily received every marvellous tale: but, as mankind increased in knowledge, and a long series of traditions had established a certain mythology and history, the poet was no longer permitted to range, uncontrolled, through the boundlefs dominions of fancy, but became restrained, in fome measure, to things believed or known. Though the duty of poetry to please and to surprise ftill fubfifted, the means varied with the state of the world, and it foon grew neceffary to make the new inventions lean on the old traditions.-The human mind delights in novelty, and is captivated by the marvellous, but even in fable itself requires the credible.-The poet, who can give to fplendid inventions, and to fictions new and bold, the air and authority of reality and truth, is mafter of the genuine fources |