Page:Annus Mirabilis - Dryden (1688).djvu/13

 of speech, that it sets before your eyes the absent object, as perfectly and more delightfully than nature. So then, the first happiness of the Poet's imagination is properly Invention, or finding of the thought; the second is Fancy, or the Variation, deriving or moulding of that thought, as the Judgment represents it proper to the subject; the third is Elocution, or the Art of clothing and adorning that thought, so found and varied, in apt, significant, and sounding words: The quickness of the Imagination is seen in the Invention, the fertility in the Fancy, and the accuracy in the Expression. For the two first of these, Ovid is famous among the Poets, for the later Virgil. Ovid images more often the movements and affections of the mind, either combating between two contrary passions, or extreamly discompos'd by one: His words therefore are the least part of his care, for he pictures Nature in disorder, with which the study and choice of words is inconsistent. This is the proper wit of Dialogue or Discourse, and, consequently, of the Drama, where all that is said is to be suppos'd the effect of sudden thought; which, though it excludes not the quickness of Wit in repartees, yet admits not a too curious election of words, too frequent allusions, or use of tropes, or, in fine, any thing that shews remoteness of thought, or labour, in the Writer. On the other side, Virgil speaks not so often to us in the person of another, like Ovid, but in his own, he relates almost all things as from himself, and thereby gains more liberty than the other, to express his thoughts with all the graces of elocution, to write more figuratively, and to confess as well the labour as the force of his Imagination. Though