  And what are the rules in accordance with which judgments of taste are tacitly made? The most general rule is simply that art should imitate nature, so that in order to be beautiful art must imitate what is beautiful in nature. Poets in particular must give truthful but lively descriptions of “natural things,” and in the case of poetry destined for the theater they must give their characters “such words, gestures, and actions” as are “appropriate to their circumstances” (Schriften, p. 81). Gottsched does not interpret this rule to mean that poets can describe only the actual actions and feelings of actual people; of course poetry can present fables as well as history. But for Gottsched a fable is