Note 42 — Chapter III · ARISTOTLE.

In all modern languages, though no doubt not in Greek, “Imitation” carries with it a fatal suggestion of copying previous examples of art, and not going direct to Nature at all. I think there is no reasonable doubt that this suggestion is responsible by itself for much of the mistakes of modern “Classical” criticism in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. You must “imitate” Homer, Virgil, Milton, not “represent” Nature.