21 



server: but in order that your comparison should make the 

 desired impression on the hearer, he must be previously ac- 

 quainted with that fact or natural appearance to which your 

 simile alludes. The end of poetry is not so much to instruct 

 as to please, and the business of the poet is not to inform his 

 reader of the existence of that phenomenon itself, but to dis- >. 



cover to him some connection between it and the subject which 

 it was intended to illustrate. It is in this respect nearly the 

 same with poetical description as with logical definition, and 

 in order that a definition be intelligible, it is necessary that 

 your reader should be previously acquainted with the signi- 

 fication of all the terms used in the explanation. I have not 

 thought to make any mention of history in this slight survey 

 of the Belles Lettres, for as it is evidently much more limited 

 in its objects, and circumscribed as to the use of ornament 

 and illustration, than poetry or oratory, it must admit of still 

 less variation ; different successive histories may be composed, 

 but they are all models of the same grand fabric, the colour- 

 ing, the arnaments, and the style of architecture varying per- 

 haps in the minuter parts, but the general outline, the pro- 

 portion of the principal members, and the most striking 

 features unaltered. < 



It has been now shewn that the sciences are in themselves 

 progressive, both from the nature of their objects considered 

 in the abstract, and the inexhaustible variety of the creation^ 

 contemplated in a philosophical manner. The objects of the ,||^ 



poUter arts, on the contrary, admit of but trivial alteration^ 



