Sentiments are proper and improper as they consist more or less with the
character and circumstances of the person to whom they are attributed,
with the rules of the composition in which they are found, or with the
settled and unalterable nature of things.
It is common among the tragick poets to introduce their persons alluding
to events or opinions, of which they could not possibly have any
knowledge. The barbarians of remote or newly discovered regions often
display their skill in European learning. The god of love is mentioned
in Tamerlane with all the familiarity of a Roman epigrammatist; and a
late writer has put Harvey's doctrine of the circulation of the blood
into the mouth of a Turkish statesman, who lived near two centuries
before it was known even to philosophers or anatomists.
Milton's learning, which acquainted him with the manners of the ancient
eastern nations, and his invention, which required no assistance from
the common cant of poetry, have preserved him from frequent outrages of
local or chronological propriety. Yet he has mentioned Chalybean steel,
of which it is not very likely that his chorus should have heard, and
has made Alp the general name of a mountain, in a region where the Alps
could scarcely be known:
No medicinal liquor can assuage,
Nor breath of cooling air from snowy Alp.
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