we expect something more than this in the
play-house or picture-room. The further the artists recedes from nature,
the greater novelty he is likely to produce; if he rises above nature,
he produces the sublime; and beauty is probably a selection and new
combination of her most agreeable parts. Yourself will be sensible of the
truth of this doctrine by recollecting over in your mind the works of
three of our celebrated artists. Sir Joshua Reynolds has introduced
sublimity even into its portraits; we admire the representation of
persons, whose reality we should have passed by unnoticed. Mrs. Angelica
Kauffman attracts our eyes with beauty, which I suppose no where exists;
certainly few Grecian faces are seen in this country. And the daring
pencil of Fuseli transports us beyond the boundaries of nature, and
ravishes us with the charm of the most interesting novelty. And
Shakespear, who excells in all these together, so far captivates the
spectator, as to make him unmindful of every kind of violation of Time,
Place, or Existence. As at the first appearance of the Ghost of Hamlet,
"his ear must be dull as the fat weed, which roots itself on Lethe's
brink," who can attend to the improbablity of the exhibition. So in many
scenes of the Tempest we perpetually believe the action passing before
our eyes, and relapse with somewhat of distaste into common life at the
intervals of the representation.

_B_. I suppose a poet of less ability would find such great machinery
difficult and cumbersome to manage?

_P_. Just so, we should be mocked at the apparent improbabilities. As in
the gardens of a Scicilian nobleman, described in Mr. Brydone's and in
Mr. Swinburn's travels, there are said to be six hundred statues of
imaginary monsters, which so disgust the spectators, that the state had
once a serious design of destroying them; and yet the very improbable
monsters in Ovid's Metamorphoses have entertained the world for many
centuries.

_B._ The monsters in your Botanic Garden, I hope, are of the latter kind?

_P._ The candid reader must determine.

THE

LOVES

OF THE

PLANTS.

CANTO II.

Again the Goddess strikes the golden lyre,
And tunes to wilder notes the warbling wire;
With soft suspended step Attention moves,
And Silence hovers o'er the listening groves;
5 Orb within orb the charmed audience throng,
And the green vault re