fertility of invention, the beauty of style and expression, the
curiosity of seeing with what kind of performances the age and country
in which they were written was delighted: for it is to be apprehended,
that at the time when very wild improbable tales were well received, the
people were in a barbarous state, and so on the footing of children, as
has been explained.'

'It is evident enough that no one who writes now can use the Pagan
deities and mythology; the only machinery, therefore, seems that of
ministering spirits, the ghosts of the departed, witches[60], and
fairies, though these latter, as the vulgar superstition concerning them
(which, while in its force, infected at least the imagination of those
that had more advantage in education, though their reason set them free
from it,) is every day wearing out, seem likely to be of little further
assistance in the machinery of poetry. As I recollect, Hammond
introduces a hag or witch into one of his love elegies, where the effect
is unmeaning and disgusting[61].'

'The man who uses his talent of ridicule in creating or grossly
exaggerating the instances he gives, who imputes absurdities that did
not happen, or when a man was a little ridiculous describes him as
having been very much so, abuses his talents greatly. The great use of
delineating absurdities is, that we may know how far human folly can go;
the account, therefore, ought of absolute necessity to be faithful. A
certain character (naming the person) as to the general cast of it, is
well described by Garrick, but a great deal of the phraseology he uses
in it, is quite his own, particularly in the proverbial comparisons,
"obstinate as a pig," &c., but I don't know whether it might not be true
of Lord ------[62], that from a too great eagerness of praise and
popularity, and a politeness carried to a ridiculous excess, he was