cviiî however, they" told with fimplicity the childifh amufements of lovers, their fmiles, their partîmes, their palpitations in the joy of an agitated heart ; their imagination did not extend further, and they were befides incapable of forming any link or connection between their ideas. William de Lorris, who began the Roman de I* Rofe9 feigns, that having fallen afleep in an orchard, he had feen in a dream allegorical perfonages of every virtue and every vice; that by walking through different groves he had heard their converfation, and had even converfed with them himfelf. It is not known whether he be the firft inventor, of this fiftion; but however that may be, all the poets, for more than two centuries, enchanted with fo rare an invention, thought they could not do bettec thaijp copy it ; and whenever they enriched it with my additional circumftance, it was the utmoft effort of their mind. It was, therefore, a long time after this period, that poets and painters, who had infenfibly and feparately brought their works to perfection, learnt to make choice of the grandeft and mod beautiful objedts nature prefented to them : to unite them with fome fort of propriety, and having gained greater ftrength to view with one glance the whole extent of their fubjeft, and to form a general plan of it. It was then, that bringing the whole to one point of view, they learnt to reduce it to that unity, without which all the works of genius or of art mud ever remain below perfection* 8PECI