compositions of others, entitle a man to the claim of reputation, it is
still a far inferior degree of merit to his who can invent and produce
those compositions, the bare disquisition of which gives the critic no
small share of fame.

THE president of the royal academy in his admirable _Discourse_ on
_imitation_, has set the folly of depending on unassisted genius, in
the clearest light; and has shewn the necessity of adding the
knowledge of others, to our own native powers, in his usual striking and
masterly manner. "The mind, says he, is a barren soil, is a soil soon
exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be
continually fertilized, and enriched with foreign matter."

YET it has been objected that study is a great enemy to originality; but
even if this were true, it would perhaps be as well that an author
should give us the ideas of still better writers, mixed and
assimilated with the matter in his own mind, as those crude and
undigested thoughts which he values under the notion that they are
original. The sweetest honey neither tastes of the rose, the
honeysuckle, nor the carnation, yet it is compounded of the very
essence of them all.

IF in the other fine arts this accumulation of knowledge is necessary,
it is indispensably so in poetry. It is a fatal rashness for any one to
trust too much to their own stock of ideas. He must invigorate them by
exercise, polish them by conversation, and increase them by every
species of elegant and virtuous knowledge, and the mind will not fail to
reproduce with interest those seeds, which are sown in it by study and
observation. Above all, let every one guard against the dangerous
opinion that he knows enough: an opinion that will weaken the energy and
reduce the powers of the mind, which, though once perhaps vigorous and
effectual, will be sunk to a state of literary imbecility, by cherishing
vain and presumptuous ideas of its own independence.

FOR instance, it may not be necessary that a poet should be deeply
skilled in the Linnaean system; but it must be allowed that a general
acquaintance with plants and flowers will furnish him with a delightful
and profitable species of instruction. He is not obliged to trace Nature
in all her nice and varied operations, with the minute accuracy of a
Boyle, or the laborious investigation of a Newton; but his _good sense_
will point out to him that no inconsiderable portion of philosophical
knowledge is requisite to