英语翻译？

Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them

lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is

implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and

other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures,

and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less

universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of

this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves we view

with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute

fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead

bodies. The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the

liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general;

whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Thus the

reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it

they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, 'Ah,

that is he.' For if you happen not to have seen the original, the

pleasure will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the

execution, the coloring, or some such other cause.

Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Next, there is the

instinct for 'harmony' and rhythm, meters being manifestly sections of

rhythm. Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift

developed by degrees their special aptitudes, till their rude

improvisations gave birth to Poetry.

Poetry now diverged in two directions, according to the individual

character of the writers. The graver spirits imitated noble actions,

and the actions of good men. The more trivial sort imitated the

actions of meaner persons, at first composing satires, as the former

did hymns to the gods and the praises of famous men. A poem of the

satirical kind cannot indeed be put down to any author earlier than

Homer; though many such writers probably there were. But from Homer

onward, instances can be cited- his own Margites, for example, and

other similar compositions. The appropriate meter was also here

introduced; hence the measure is still called the iambic or lampooning

measure, being that in which people lampooned one another. Thus the

older poets were distinguished as writers of heroic or of lampooning

verse.

As, in the serious style, Homer is pre-eminent among poets, for he

alone combined dramatic form with excellence of imitation so he too

first laid down the main lines of comedy, by dramatizing the ludicrous

instead of writing personal satire. His Margites bears the same

relation to comedy that the Iliad and Odyssey do to tragedy. But

when Tragedy and Comedy came to light, the two classes of poets

still followed their natural bent: the lampooners became writers of

Comedy, and the Epic poets were succeeded by Tragedians, since the

drama was a larger and higher form of art.

Whether Tragedy has as yet perfected its proper types or not; and

whether it is to be judged in itself, or in relation also to the

audience- this raises another question. Be that as it may, Tragedy- as

also Comedy- was at first mere improvisation. The one originated

with the authors of the Dithyramb, the other with those of the phallic

songs, which are still in use in many of our cities. Tragedy

advanced by slow degrees; each new element that showed itself was in

turn developed. Having passed through many changes, it found its

natural form, and there it stopped.

Aeschylus first introduced a second actor; he diminished the

importance of the Chorus, and assigned the leading part to the

dialogue. Sophocles raised the number of actors to three, and added

scene-painting. Moreover, it was not till late that the short plot was

discarded for one of greater compass, and the grotesque diction of the

earlier satyric form for the stately manner of Tragedy. The iambic

measure then replaced the trochaic tetrameter, which was originally

employed when the poetry was of the satyric order, and had greater

with dancing. Once dialogue had come in, Nature herself discovered the

appropriate measure. For the iambic is, of all measures, the most

colloquial we see it in the fact that conversational speech runs

into iambic lines more frequently than into any other kind of verse;

rarely into hexameters, and only when we drop the colloquial

intonation. The additions to the number of 'episodes' or acts, and the

other accessories of which tradition tells, must be taken as already

described; for to discuss them in detail would, doubtless, be a

large undertaking.