is commonly esteemed a sufficient foundation for any fiction. We have
been so much accustomed to the names of MARS, JUPITER, VENUS, that
in the same manner as education infixes any opinion, the constant
repetition of these ideas makes them enter into the mind with facility,
and prevail upon the fancy, without influencing the judgment. In like
manner tragedians always borrow their fable, or at least the names of
their principal actors, from some known passage in history; and that not
in order to deceive the spectators; for they will frankly confess, that
truth is not in any circumstance inviolably observed: but in order
to procure a more easy reception into the imagination for those
extraordinary events, which they represent. But this is a precaution,
which is not required of comic poets, whose personages and incidents,
being of a more familiar kind, enter easily into the conception, and are
received without any such formality, even though at first night they be
known to be fictitious, and the pure offspring of the fancy.

This mixture of truth and falshood in the fables of tragic poets not
only serves our present purpose, by shewing, that the imagination can be
satisfyed without any absolute belief or assurance; but may in another
view be regarded as a very strong confirmation of this system. It is
evident, that poets make use of this artifice of borrowing the names
of their persons, and the chief events of their poems, from history, in
order to procure a more easy reception for the whole, and cause it
to make a deeper impression on the fancy and affections. The several
incidents of the piece acquire a kind of relation by being united into
one poem or representation; and if any of these incidents be an object
of belief, it bestows a force and vivacity on the others, which are
related to it. The vividness of the first conception diffuses itself
along the relations, and is conveyed, as by so many pipes or canals,
to every idea that has any communication with the primary one. This,
indeed, can never amount to a perfect assurance; and that because
the union among the ideas is, in a manner, accidental: But still it
approaches so near, in its influence, as may convince us, that they
are derived from the same origin. Belief must please the imagination
by means of the force and vivacity which attends it; since every idea,
which has force and vivacity, is found to be agreeable to that faculty.

To confirm this we may observe, th