270 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book III. 



time, with verfificatioii and every ornament of flile, cfpecially if it be 

 in fuch a language as the Greek, which, befides the beauty of the 

 numbers that make the verfe, is compofed ot words, which have in 

 themfelves, without the aid of verfification, both melody and rhythm : 

 For the compofition of long and fhort fyllables, makes the rhythm 

 of the language ; and its accents are mufical tones. Now, as all 

 mufic confifts of melody and rhythm, the Greek verfe, which, 

 from its rhythm being meafured and governed by certain rules, is 

 called fji^sTfov, may be faid to join together mufic and poetry, the two 

 fined of the fine arts. 



In a work of this kind, it would be improper to fpeak of other 

 kinds of poetry, iuch as the tragic or the comic. As to the tragic, 

 I will only obferve, that the chorufes of the Greek tragedy prefented 

 the fineft fcenes of the imitative kind that can be imagined : For 

 there were there joined three imitative arts, all operating at the fame 

 time ; poetry, mufic, and that art, by which adlions, paffions, and 

 fentiments were reprefented by the motions of the body to mufic. 

 This laft kind of imitation the Romans adopted, and were extreme- 

 ly fond of it : But they feparated from it mufic and poetry ; fo that 

 they made it an exhibition much inferior to the chorus of the 

 Greek tragedy, which afFedted the fpedators fo much. I will 

 only fay further ot the three kinds of poetry I have mentioned, 

 that in the compofition of them the genius of man has improved 

 upon nature ; for no events of human life, that have adually hap- 

 pened, would make a good epic poem, a tragedy, or a comedy, if 

 the inventive genius of man did not arrange the events in a manner 

 different from that in which they adiially exifted, and, at the fame 

 time, take from them many circumftances, and add others, by which 

 they adorned them very much. Upon the fuhjed: of the fine arts 

 I will add, that there is another in which we likewife make im- 

 provements upon nature : The art I mean is painting, and particu- 

 larly 



