OF THE IMITATIVE ART S. THE PART I. HE most perfect imitation of an object of any kind must in all cafes, it is evident, be another object of the fame kind, made as exactly as poffible after the fame model. What, for example, would be the most perfect imitation of the carpet which now lies before me ?-Another carpet, certainly, wrought as exactly as poffible after the fame pattern. But, whatever might be the merit or beauty of this second carpet, it would not be supposed to derive any from the circumftance of its having been made in imitation of the firft, This circumftance of its being not an original, but a copy, would even be confidered as fome diminution of that merit; a greater or smaller, in proportion as the object was of a nature to lay claim to a greater or fmaller degree of admiration. It would not much diminish the merit of a common carpet, because in such trifling objects, which at best can lay claim to fo little beauty or merit of any kind, we do not always think it worth while to affect originality: it would diminish a good deal that of a carpet of very exquifite workmanship. In objects of still greater importance, this exact, or, as it would be called, this fervile imitation, would be confidered as the the most unpardonable blemish. To build another St. Peter's, or St. Paul's church, of exactly the fame dimenfions, proportions, and ornaments with the prefent buildings at Rome, or London, would be fuppofed to argue fuch a miferable barrennefs of genius and invention as would difgrace the most expensive magnificence. The exact resemblance of the correfpondent parts of the fame object is frequently confidered as a beauty, and the want of it as a deformity; as in the correfpondent members of the human body, in the opposite wings of the fame building, in the oppofite trees of the fame alley, in the correspondent compartments of the fame piece of carpet-work, or of the fame flower-garden, in the chairs or tables which stand in the correspondent parts of the fame room, &c. But in objects of the fame kind, which in other refpects are regarded as altogether feparate and unconnected, this exact refemblance is feldom confidered as a beauty, nor the want of it as a deformity. A man, and in the fame manner a horfe, is handfome or ugly, each of them, on account of his own intrinfic beauty or deformity, without any: regard to their resembling or not resembling, the one, another man, or the other, another horfe. A fet of coach-horfes, indeed, is fuppofed to be handfomer when they are all exactly matched; but each horse is, in this cafe, confidered not as a feparated and uncon nected object, or as a whole by himfelf, but as a part of another whole, to the other parts of which he ought to bear a certain correfpondence: Separated from the fet, he derives neither beauty from his resemblance, nor deformity from his unlikeness to the other horfes which compofe it. Even in the correspondent parts of the fame object, we frequently. require no more than a refemblance in the general outline. If the inferior members of thofe correfpondent parts are too minute to be feen feen diftinctly, without a separate and distinct examination of each part by itself, as a feparate and unconnected object, we should fometimes even be displeased if the refemblance was carried beyond this general outline. In the correfpondent parts of a room we frequently hang pictures of the fame fize; thofe pictures, however, resemble one another in nothing but the frame, or, perhaps, in the general character of the fubject: If the one is a landfcape, the other is a landscape too; if the one reprefents a religious or a Bacchanalian fubject, its companion represents another of the fame kind. Nobody ever thought of repeating the fame picture in each corre spondent frame. The frame, and the general character of two or three pictures, is as much as the eye can comprehend at one view, or from one station. Each picture, in order to be feen diftinctly, and understood thoroughly, must be viewed from a particular ftation, and examined by itself as a feparate and unconnected object. In a hall or portico, adorned with statues, the nitches, or perhaps the pedestals, may exactly refemble one another, but the ftatues are always different. Even the masks which are sometimes carried upon the different key-ftones of the fame arcade, or of the correfpondent doors and windows of the fame front, though they may all resemble one another in the general outline, yet each of them has always its own peculiar features, and a grimace of its own. There are fome Gothic buildings in which the correfpondent windows refemble one another only in the general outline, and not in the smaller ornaments and fubdivifions. These are different in each, and the architect had confidered. them as too minute to be seen distinctly, without a particular and feparate examination of each window by itfelf, as a feparate and unconnected object. A variety of this fort, however, I think, is not agreeable. In objects which are fufceptible only of a certain inferior order of beauty, fuch as the frames of pictures, the nitches or the pedestals of ftatues, &c. there feems frequently to |