the acts of doing or striving to copy after, or become like to, another person or thing.

Du Bos observes, that the principal merit of poems and pictures consists in the imitation of such objects as would have excited real passions; and that the passions which these imitations give rise to, are only superficial, and not so strong as that of the object imitated, and are therefore soon effaced. He also maintains, that the imitation of tragic objects in poems and pictures, afford most pleasure: we listen, therefore, with pleasure to these unhappy men who make a recital of their misfortunes by means of a painter's pencil, or of a poet's verses; but, as Diogenes Laertius observes, it would afflict us extremely, were we to hear them bewailing their sad failings in person.