'Not if philosophers may be believed.' Nor need we wonder that his bed has but an imperfect relation to the truth.

Reflect:--Here are three beds; one in nature, which is made by God; another, which is made by the carpenter; and the third, by the painter.

God only made one, nor could he have made more than one; for if there had been two, there would always have been a third--more absolute and abstract than either, under which they would have been included.

We may therefore conceive God to be the natural maker of the bed, and in a lower sense the carpenter is also the maker; but the painter is rather the imitator of what the other two make; he has to do with a creation which is thrice removed from reality.

And the tragic poet is an imitator, and, like every other imitator, is thrice removed from the king and from the truth.
The painter imitates not the original bed, but the bed made by the carpenter.