In reality, poetry and rhetoric do not succeed in exact description so well as painting does; their business is, to affect rather by sympathy than imitation; to display rather the effect of things on the mind of the speaker, or of others, than to present a clear idea of the things themselves.

This is their most extensive province, and that in which they succeed the best.
SECTION VI.
POETRY NOT STRICTLY AN IMITATIVE ART.
Hence we may observe that poetry, taken in its most general sense, cannot with strict propriety be called an art of imitation.

It is indeed an imitation so far as it describes the manners and passions of men which their words can express; where _animi motus effert interprete lingua_.

There it is strictly imitation; and all merely _dramatic_ poetry is of this sort.

But _descriptive_ poetry operates chiefly by _substitution_; by the means of sounds, which by custom have the effect of realities.