...what the generality of mankind have allowed to excel. A studious and correct observer of antiquity, he set himself to consider nature with the lights it lent him, and he found the more aid he borrowed from the one, the more delightfully he resembled the other. To copy nature...

...what the generality of mankind have allowed to excel. A studious and correct observer of antiquity, he set himself to consider nature with the lights it...delight, is reserved only for those whom accident has blessed with uncommon talents, or such as have read the ancients with indefatigable industry. . .'...

...by a happy chemistry, without its deformities or faults." Or as Goldsmith reminds us more bluntly, "To copy nature is a task the most bungling workman...those whom accident has blest with uncommon talents." Both are quoted by CV Deane in Aspects of Eighteenth Century Nature Poetry (1935; reprint, London:...