The works of Richard Hurd, volume 2 (of 8)

by Richard Hurd

TO MR. MASON.

I have said, in the discourse on Poetical Imitation, “that coincidencies of a certain kind, and in a certain degree, cannot fail to convict a writer of Imitation[47].” You are curious, my friend, to know what these coincidencies are, and have thought that an attempt to point them out would furnish an useful Supplement to what I have written on this subject. But the just execution of this design would require, besides a careful examination of the workings of the human mind, an exact scrutiny of the most original and most imitative writers. And, with all your partiality for me, can you, in earnest, think me capable of fulfilling the first of these conditions; Or, if I were, do you imagine that, at this time o’ day, I can have the leisure to perform the other? My younger years, indeed, have been spent in turning over those authors which young men are most fond of; and among these I will not disown that the Poets of ancient and modern fame have had their full share in my affection. But you, who love me so well, would not wish me to pass more of my life in these flowery regions; which though you may yet wander in without offence, and the rather as you wander in them with so pure a mind and to so moral a purpose, there seems no decent pretence for me to loiter in them any longer.

Yet in saying this I would not be thought to assume that severe character; which, though sometimes the garb of reason, is oftener, I believe, the mask of dulness, or of something worse. No, I am too sensible to the charms, nay to the uses of your profession, to affect a contempt for it. The great Roman said well, Haec studia adolescentiam alunt; senectutem oblectant. We make a full meal of them in our youth. And no philosophy requires so perfect a mortification as that we should wholly abstain from them in our riper years. But should we invert the observation; and take this light food not as the refreshment only, but as the proper nourishment of Age; such a name as Cicero’s, I am afraid, would be wanting, and not easily found, to justify the practice.

Let us own then, on a greater authority than His, “That every thing is beautiful in its season.” The Spring hath its buds and blossoms: But, as the year runs on, you are not displeased, perhaps, to see them fall off; and would certainly be disappointed not to find them, in due time, succeeded by those mellow hangings, the poet somewhere speaks of.

I could alledge still graver reasons. But I would only say, in one word, that your friend has had his share in these amusements. I may recollect with pleasure, but must never live over again

Pieriosque dies, et amantes carmina somnos.

Yet something, you insist, is to be done; and, if it amount to no more than a specimen or slight sketch, such as my memory, or the few notes I have by me, would furnish, the design, you think, is not totally to be relinquished.

I understand the danger of gratifying you on these terms. Yet, whatever it be, I have no power to excuse myself from any attempt, by which, you tell me at least, I may be able to gratify you. I will do my best, then, to draw together such observations, as I have sometimes thought, in reading the poets, most material for the certain discovery of Imitations. And I address them to YOU, not only as you are the properest judge of the subject; you, who understand so well in what manner the Poets are us’d to imitate each other, and who yourself so finely imitate the best of them; But as I would give you this small proof of my affection, and have perhaps the ambition of publishing to the world in this way the entire friendship, that subsists between us.

You tell me I have not succeeded amiss in explaining the difficulty of detecting Imitations. The materials of poetry, you own, lie so much in common amongst all writers, and the several ways of employing them are so much under the controul of common sense, that writings will in many respects be similar, where there is no thought or design of Imitating. I take advantage of this concession to conclude from it, That we can seldom pronounce with certainty of Imitations without some external proof to assist us in the discovery. You will understand me to mean by these external proofs, the previous knowledge we have, from considerations not respecting the Nature of the work itself, of the writer’s ability or inducements to imitate. Our first enquiry, then, will be, concerning the Age, Character, and Education of the supposed Imitator.

We can determine with little certainty, how far the principal Greek writers have been indebted to Imitation. We trace the waters of Helicon no higher than to their source. And we acquiesce, with reason, in the device of the old painter, you know of, who somewhat rudely indeed, but not absurdly, drew the figure of Homer with a fountain streaming out of his mouth, and the other poets watering at it.

Hither, as to their fountain, other Stars
Repairing, in their golden urns draw light.

The Greek writers then were, or, for any thing we can say, might be Original.

But we can rarely affirm this of any other. And the reason is plain. When a taste for letters prevailed in any country, if it arose at first from the efforts of original thinking, it was immediately cherished and cultivated by the study of the old writers. You are too well acquainted with the progress of ancient and modern wit to doubt of this fact. Rome adorned itself in the spoils of Greece. And both assisted in dressing up the later European poetry. What else do you find in the Italian or French Wits, but the old matter, worked over again; only presented to us in a new form, and embellished perhaps with a conceit or two of mere modern invention?

But the English, you say, or rather your fondness for your Masters leads you to suppose, are original thinkers. ’Tis true, Nature has taken a pleasure to shew us what she could do, by the production of ONE Prodigy. But the rest are what we admire them for, not indeed without Genius, perhaps with a larger share of it than has fallen to the lot of others, yet directly and chiefly by the discipline of art and the helps of imitation.

The golden times of the English Poetry were, undoubtedly, the reigns of our two Queens. Invention was at its height, in the one; and Correctness, in the other. In both, the manners of a court refin’d, without either breaking or corrupting the spirit of our poets. But do you forget that Elizabeth read Greek and Latin almost as easily as our Professors? And can you doubt that what she knew so well, would be known, admired, and imitated by every other? Or say, that the writers of her time were, some of them, ignorant enough of the learned languages to be inventors; can you suppose, from what you know of the fashion of that age, that their fancies would not be sprinkled, and their wits refreshed by the essences of the Italian poetry?

I scarcely need say a word of our OTHER Queen, whose reign was unquestionably the æra of classic imitation and of classic taste. Even they, who had never been as far as Greece or Italy, to warm their imaginations or stock their memories, might do both to a tolerable degree in France; which, though it bowed to our country’s arms, had almost the ascendant in point of letters.

I mention these things only to put you in mind that hardly one of our poets has been in a condition to do without, or certainly be above, the suspicion of learned imitation. And the observation is so true, that even in this our age, when good letters, they say, are departing from us, the Greek or Roman stamp is still visible in every work of genius, that has taken with the public. Do you think one needed to be told in the title-page, that a late Drama, or some later Odes were formed on the ancient model?

The drift of all this, you will say, is to overturn the former discourse; for that now I pretend, every degree of likeness to a preceding writer is an argument of imitation. Rather, if you please, conclude that, in my opinion, every degree of likeness is exposed to the suspicion of imitation. To convert this suspicion into a proof, it is not enough to say, that a writer might, but that his circumstances make it plain or probable at least, that he did, imitate.

Of these circumstances then, the first I should think deserving our attention, is the AGE in which the writer lived. One should know if it were an age addicted to much study, and in which it was creditable for the best writers to make a shew of their reading. Such especially was the age succeeding to that memorable æra, the revival of letters in these western countries. The fashion of the time was to interweave as much of ancient wit as possible in every new work. Writers were so far from affecting to think and speak in their own way, that it was their pride to make the admired ancient think and speak for them. This humour continued very long, and in some sort even still continues: with this difference indeed, that, then, the ancients were introduced to do the honours, since, to do the drudgery of the entertainment. But several causes conspired to carry it to its height in England about the beginning of the last century. You may be sure, then, the writers of that period abound in imitations. The best poets boasted of them as their sovereign excellence. And you will easily credit, for instance, that B. Jonson was a servile imitator, when you find him on so many occasions little better than a painful translator.

I foresee the occasion I shall have, in the course of this letter, to weary you with citations: and would not therefore go out of my way for them. Yet, amidst a thousand instances of this sort in Jonson, the following, I fancy, will entertain you. The Latin verses, you know, are of Catullus.

Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis,
Ignotus pecori, nullo convulsus aratro,
Quem mulcent auræ, firmat sol, educat imber,
Multi illum pueri, multæ optavere puellæ.
Idem, quum tenui carptus defloruit ungui,
Nulli illum pueri, nullæ optavere puellæ.

It came in Jonson’s way, in one of his masks, to translate this passage; and observe with what industry he has secured the sense, while the spirit of his author escapes him.

Look, how a flower that close in closes grows,
Hid from rude cattle, bruised with no plows,
Which th’ air doth stroke, sun strengthen, show’rs shoot high’r,
It many youths, and many maids desire;
The same, when cropt by cruel hand, is wither’d,
No youths at all, no maidens have desir’d.

—It was not thus, you remember, that Ariosto and Pope have translated these fine verses. But to return to our purpose:

To this consideration of the Age of a writer, you may add, if you please, that of his Education. Though it might not, in general, be the fashion to affect learning, the habits acquired by a particular writer might dispose him to do so. What was less esteemed by the enthusiasts of Milton’s time (of which however he himself was one of the greatest) than prophane or indeed any kind of learning? Yet we, who know that his youth was spent in the study of the best writers in every language, want but little evidence to convince us that his great genius did not disdain to stoop to imitation. You assent, I dare say, to Dryden’s compliment, though it be an invidious one, “That no man has so copiously translated Homer’s Grecisms, and the Latin elegancies of Virgil.” Nay, don’t you remember, the other day, that we were half of a mind to give him up for a shameless plagiary, chiefly because we were sure he had been a great reader.

But no good writer, it will be said, has flourished out of a learned age, or at least without some tincture of learning. It may be so. Yet every writer is not disposed to make the most of these advantages. What if we pay some regard then to the CHARACTER of the writer? A poet, enamoured of himself, and who sets up for a great inventive genius, thinks much to profit by the sense of his predecessors, and even when he steals, takes care to dissemble his thefts, and to conceal them as much as possible. You know I have instanced in such a poet in Sir William D’Avenant. In detecting the imitations of such a writer, one must then proceed with some caution. But what if our concern be with one, whose modesty leads him to revere the sense and even the expression of approved authors, whose taste enables him to select the finest passages in their works, and whose judgment determines him to make a free use of them? Suppose we know all this from common fame, and even from his own confession; would you scruple to call that an imitation in him, which in the other might have passed for resemblance only?

As the character is amiable, you will be pleased to hear me own, there are many modern poets to whom it belongs. Perhaps, the first that occurred to my thoughts was Mr. Addison. But the observation holds of others, and of one, in particular, very much his superior in true genius. I know not whether you agree with me, that the famous line in the Essay on Man;

“An honest man’s the noblest work of God,”

is taken from Plato’s, Πάντων ἱερώτατόν ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος ὁ ἀγαθός. But I am sure you will that the still more famous lines, which shallow men repeat without understanding,

“For modes of Faith let graceless zealots fight,
His, can’t be wrong whose life is in the right:”

are but copied, though with vast improvement in the force and turn of expression, from the excellent and, let it be no disparagement to him to say, from the orthodox Mr. Cowley. The poet is speaking of his friend Crashaw.

“His Faith perhaps in some nice tenets might
Be wrong; his life, I’m sure, was in the right.”

Mr. Pope, who found himself in the same circumstances with Crashaw, and had suffered no doubt from the like uncharitable constructions of graceless zeal, was very naturally tempted to adopt this candid sentiment, and to give it the further heightening of his own spirited expression.

Let us see then how far we are got in this inquiry. We may say of the old Latin poets, that they all came out of the Greek schools. It is as true of the moderns in this part of the world, that they, in general, have had their breeding in both the Greek and Latin. But when the question is of any particular writer, how far and in what instances you may presume on his being a professed imitator, much will depend on the certain knowledge you have of his Age, Education, and Character. When all these circumstances meet in one man, as they have done in others, but in none perhaps so eminently as in B. Jonson, wherever you find an acknowledged likeness, you will do him no injustice to call it imitation.

Yet all this, you say, comes very much short of what you require of me. You want me to specify those peculiar considerations, and even to reduce them into rule, from which one may be authorised, in any instance to pronounce of imitations. It is not enough, you pretend, to say of any passage in a celebrated poet, that it most probably was taken from some other. In your extreme jealousy for the credit of your order, you call upon me to shew the distinct marks which convict him of this commerce.

In a word, You require me to turn to the poets; to gather a number of those passages I call Imitations; and to point to the circumstances in each that prove them to be so. I attend you with pleasure in this amusing search. It is not material, I suppose, that we observe any strict method in our ramblings. And yet we will not wholly neglect it.

Perhaps then we shall find undoubted marks of Imitation, both in the Sentiment, and Expression of great writers.

To begin with such considerations as are most GENERAL.

I. An identity of the subject-matter of poetry is no sure evidence of Imitation: and least of all, perhaps, in natural description. Yet where the local peculiarities of nature are to be described, there an exact conformity of the matter will evince an imitation.

Descriptive poets have ever been fond of lavishing all the riches of their fancy on the Spring. But the appearances of this prime of the year are so diversified with the climate, that descriptions of it, if taken directly from nature, must needs be very different. The Greek and Latin, and, since them, the Provencial poets, when they insist, as they always do, on the indulgent softness of this season, its genial dews and fostering breezes, speak nothing but what is agreeable to their own experience and feeling.

It ver; et Venus; et Veneris praenuntius antè
Pinnatus graditur Zephyrus vestigia propter:
Flora quibus mater praespergens antè viaï
Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.

Venus, or the spirit of love, is represented by those poets as brooding o’er this delicious season;

Rura foecundat voluptas: rura Venerem sentiunt.
Ipsa gemmas purpurantem pingit annum floribus:
Ipsa surgentis papillas de Favonî spiritu
Urguet in toros tepentes; ipsa roris lucidi, &c.

and a great deal more to the same purpose, which every one recollects in the old classic and in the Provencial poets.

But when we hear this language from the more Northern, and particularly our English bards, who perhaps are shivering with the blasts of the North-east, at the very time their imagination would warm itself with these notions, one is certain this cannot be the effect of observation, but of a sportful fancy; enchanted by the native loveliness of these exotic images, and charmed by the secret insensible power of imitation.

And to shew the certainty of this conclusion, Shakespear, we may observe, who had none of this classical or Provencial bias on his mind, always describes, not a Greek, or Italian, or Provencial, but an English Spring; where we meet with many unamiable characters; and, among the rest, instead of Zephyr or Favonius, we have the bleak North-east, that nips the blooming infants of the Spring.

But there are other obvious examples. In Cranmer’s prophetic speech, at the end of Henry VIII. when the poet makes him say of Queen Elizabeth, that,

“In her days ev’ry man shall eat with safety
Under his own vine what he plants.”

and of King James, that,

“He shall flourish,
And, like a mountain Cedar, reach his branches
To all the plains about him”—

It is easy to see that his Vine and Cedar are not of English growth, but transplanted from Judæa. I do not mention this as an impropriety in the poet, who, for the greater solemnity of his prediction, and even from a principle of decorum, makes his Arch-bishop fetch his imagery from Scripture. I only take notice of it as a certain argument that the imagery was not his own, that is, not suggested by his own observation of nature.

The case you see, in these instances, is the same as if an English landskip-painter should choose to decorate his Scene with an Italian sky. The Connoisseur would say, he had copied this particular from Titian, and not from Nature. I presume then to give it for a certain note of Imitation, when the properties of one clime are given to another.

II. You will draw the same conclusion whenever you find “The Genius of one people given to another.”

1. Plautus gives us the following true picture of the Greek manners:

—In hominum aetate multa eveniunt hujusmodi—
Irae interveniunt, redeunt rursum in gratiam,
Verùm irae siquae fortè eveniunt hujusmodi,
Inter eos rursum si reventum in gratiam est,
Bis tanto amici sunt inter se, quàm prius.
Amphyt. A. III. S. 2.

You are better acquainted with the modern Italian writers than I am; but if ever you find any of them transferring this placability of temper into an eulogy of his countrymen, conclude without hesitation, that the sentiment is taken.

2. The late Editor of Jonson’s works observes very well the impropriety of leaving a trait of Italian manners in his Every man in his humour, when he fitted up that Play with English characters. Had the scene been laid originally in England, and that trait been given us, it had convicted the poet of Imitation.

3. This attention to the genius of a people will sometimes shew you, that the form of composition, as well as particular sentiments, comes from Imitation. An instance occurs to me as I am writing. The Greeks, you know, were great haranguers. So were the ancient Romans, but in a less degree. One is not surprized therefore that their historians abound in set speeches; which, in their hands, become the finest parts of their works. But when you find modern writers indulging in this practice of speech-making, you may guess from what source the habit is derived. Would Machiavel, for instance, as little of a Scholar as, they say, he was, have adorned his fine history of Florence with so many harangues, if the classical bias, imperceptibly, it may be, to himself, had not hung on his mind?

Another example is remarkable. You have sometimes wondered how it has come to pass that the moderns delight so much in dialogue-writing, and yet that so very few have succeeded in it. The proper answer to the first part of your enquiry will go some way towards giving you satisfaction as to the last. The practice is not original, has no foundation in the manners of modern times. It arose from the excellence of the Greek and Roman dialogues, which was the usual form in which the ancients chose to deliver their sentiments on any subject.

Still another instance comes in my way. How happened it, one may ask, that Sir Philip Sydney in his Arcadia, and afterwards Spenser in his Fairy Queen, observed so unnatural a conduct in those works; in which the Story proceeds, as it were, by snatches, and with continual interruptions? How was the good sense of those writers, so conversant besides in the best models of antiquity, seduced into this preposterous method? The answer, no doubt, is, that they were copying the design, or disorder rather, of Ariosto, the favourite poet of that time.

III. Of near akin to this contrariety to the genius of a people is another mark which a careful reader will observe “in the representation of certain Tenets, different from those which prevail in a writer’s country or time.”

1. We seldom are able to fasten an imitation, with certainty, on such a writer as Shakespear. Sometimes we are, but never to so much advantage as when he happens to forget himself in this respect. When Claudio, in Measure for Measure, pleads for his life in that famous speech,

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lye in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence about
The pendant world—

It is plain that these are not the Sentiments which any man entertained of Death in the writer’s age or in that of the speaker. We see in this passage a mixture of Christian and Pagan ideas; all of them very susceptible of poetical ornament, and conducive to the argument of the Scene; but such as Shakespear had never dreamt of but for Virgil’s Platonic hell; where, as we read,

aliae panduntur inanes
Suspensae ad ventos: aliis sub gurgite vasto,
Infectum eluitur scelus, aut exuritur igni.
Virg. l. vi.

2. A prodigiously fine passage in Milton may furnish another example of this sort,

When Lust
By unchast looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of Sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp,
Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres,
Ling’ring, and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loth to leave the body, that it lov’d,
And linkt itself by carnal sensuality
To a degenerate and degraded state.
Mask at Ludlow Castle.

This philosophy of imbruted souls becoming thick shadows is so remote from any ideas entertained at present of the effects of Sin, and at the same time is so agreeable to the notions of Plato (a double favourite of Milton, for his own sake, and for the sake of his being a favourite with his Italian Masters), that there is not the least question of its being taken from the Phaedo.

Ἡ τοιαύτη ψυχὴ βαρύνεταί τε καὶ ἕλκεται πάλιν εἰς τὸν ὁρατὸν τόπον, φόβῳ τοῦ ἀειδοῦς τε καὶ ᾅδου, περὶ τὰ μνήματα καὶ τοὺς τάφους κυλινδουμένη· περὶ ἃ δὴ καὶ ὤφθη ἄττα ψυχῶν σκιοειδῆ φαντάσματα, οἷα παρέχονται αἱ τοιαῦται ψυχαὶ εἴδωλα, αἱ μὴ καθαρῶς ἀπολυθεῖσαι——

There is no wonder, now one sees the fountain Milton drew from, that, in admiration of this poetical philosophy (which nourished the fine spirits of that time, though it corrupted some), he should make the other speaker in the scene cry out, as in a fit of extasy,

How charming is divine philosophy!
Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo’s lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns—

The very ideas which Lord Shaftesbury has employed in his encomiums on the Platonic philosophy; and the very language which Dr. Henry More would have used, if he had known to express himself so soberly.

3. Having said so much of Plato, whom the Italian writers have helped to make known to us, let me just observe one thing, to our present purpose, of those Italian writers themselves. One of their peculiarities, and almost the first that strikes us, is a certain sublime mystical air which runs through all their fictions. We find them a sort of philosophical fanatics, indulging themselves in strange conceits “concerning the Soul, the chyming of celestial orbs, and presiding Syrens.” One may tell by these marks, that they doted on the fancies of Plato; if we had not, besides, direct evidence for this conclusion. Tasso says of himself, and he applauds the same thing in Petrarch, “Lessi già tutte l’opere di Platone, è mi rimassero molti semi nella menta della sua dottrina.” I take these words from Menage, who has much more to the same purpose, in his elegant observations on the Amintas of this poet.

One sees then where Milton had been for that imagery in the Arcades,

then listen I
To the celestial Syrens’ harmony,
That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres
And sing to those that hold the vital shears,
And turn the adamantine spindle round,
On which the fate of Gods and men is wound.

The best comment on these verses is a passage in the x^th Book of Plato’s Republic, where this whole system, of Syrens quiring to the fates, is explained or rather delivered.

IV. We have seen a Mark of Imitation, in the allusion of writers to certain strange, and foreign tenets of philosophy. The observation may be extended to all those passages (which are innumerable in our poets) that allude to the rites, customs, language, and theology of Paganism.

It is true, indeed, this Species of Imitation is not that which is, properly, the subject of this Letter. The most original writer is allowed to furnish himself with poetical ideas from all quarters. And the management of learned Allusion is to be regarded, perhaps, as one of the nicest offices of Invention. Yet it may be useful to see from what sources a great poet derives his materials; and the rather, as this detection will sometimes account for the manner in which he disposes of them. However, I will but detain you with a remark or two on this class of Imitations.

1. I observe, that even Shakespear himself abounds in learned Allusions. How he came by them, is another question; though not so difficult to be answered, you know, as some have imagined. They, who are in such astonishment at the learning of Shakespear, besides that they certainly carry the notion of his illiteracy too far, forget that the Pagan imagery was familiar to all the poets of his time—that abundance of this sort of learning was to be picked up from almost every English book, he could take into his hands—that many of the best writers in Greek and Latin had been translated into English—that his conversation lay among the most learned, that is, the most paganized poets of his age—but above all, that, if he had never looked into books, or conversed with bookish men, he might have learned almost all the secrets of paganism (so far, I mean, as a poet had any use of them) from the Masks of B. Jonson; contrived by that poet with so pedantical an exactness, that one is ready to take them for lectures and illustrations on the ancient learning, rather than exercises of modern wit. The taste of the age, much devoted to erudition, and still more, the taste of the Princes, for whom he writ, gave a prodigious vogue to these unnatural exhibitions. And the knowledge of antiquity, requisite to succeed in them, was, I imagine, the reason that Shakespear was not over-fond to try his hand at these elaborate trifles. Once indeed he did, and with such success as to disgrace the very best things of this kind we find in Jonson. The short Mask in the Tempest is fitted up with a classical exactness. But its chief merit lies in the beauty of the Shew, and the richness of the poetry. Shakespear was so sensible of his Superiority, that he could not help exulting a little upon it, where he makes Ferdinand say,

This is a most majestic Vision, and
Harmonious charming Lays—

’Tis true, another Poet, who possessed a great part of Shakespear’s genius and all Jonson’s learning, has carried this courtly entertainment to its last perfection. But the Mask at Ludlow Castle was, in some measure, owing to the fairy Scenes of his Predecessor; who chose this province of Tradition, not only as most suitable to the wildness of his vast creative imagination, but as the safest for his unlettered Muse to walk in. For here he had much, you knew, to expect from the popular credulity, and nothing to fear from the classic superstition of that time.

2. It were endless to apply this note of imitation to other poets confessedly learned. Yet one instance is curious enough to be just mentioned.

Mr. Waller, in his famous poem on the victory over the Dutch on June 3, 1665, has the following lines;

His flight tow’rds heav’n th’ aspiring Belgian took;
But fell, like Phaeton, with thunder strook:
From vaster hopes than his, he seem’d to fall,
That durst attempt the British Admiral:
From her broadsides a ruder flame is thrown,
Than from the fiery chariot of the Sun:
That, bears THE RADIANT ENSIGN OF THE DAY;
And She, the flag that governs in the Sea.

He is comparing the British Admiral’s Ship to the Chariot of the Sun. You smile at the quaintness of the conceit, and the ridicule he falls into, in explaining it. But that is not the question at present. The latter, he says, bears the radiant ensign of the day: The other, the ensign of naval dominion. We understand how properly the English Flag is here denominated. But what is that other Ensign? The Sun itself, it will be said. But who, in our days, ever expressed the Sun by such a periphrasis? The image is apparently antique, and easily explained by those who know that anciently the Sun was commonly emblematized by a starry or radiate figure; nay, that such a figure was placed aloft, as an Ensign, over the Sun’s charioteer, as we may see in representations of this sort on ancient Gems and Medals.

From this original then Mr. Waller’s imagery was certainly taken; and it is properly applied in this place where he is speaking of the Chariot of the Sun, and Phaeton’s fall from it. But to remove all doubt in the case, we can even point to the very passage of a Pagan poet, which Mr. Waller had in his eye, or rather translated.

Proptereà noctes hiberno tempore longæ
Cessant, dum veniat RADIATUM INSIGNE DIEI.
Lucr. l. v. 698.

Here, you see, the poet’s allusion to a classic idea has led us to the discovery of the very passage from which it was taken. And this use a learned reader will often make of the species of Imitation, here considered.

V. Great writers, you find, sometimes forget the character of the Age, they live in; the principles, and notions that belong to it. “Sometimes they forget themselves, that is, their own situation and character.” Another sign of the influence of Imitation.

1. When we see such men, as Strada and Mariana, writers of fine talents indeed, but of recluse lives and narrow observation, chusing to talk like men of the world, and abounding in the most refined conclusions of the cabinet, we are sure that this character, which we find so natural in a Cardinal de Retz, is but assumed by these Jesuits. And we are not surprized to discover, on examination, that their best reflexions are copied from Tacitus.

On the other hand, when a man of the world took it into his head, the other day, in a moping fit, to talk Sentences, every body concluded that this was not the language of the writer or his situation, but that he had been poaching in some pedant; perhaps in the Stoical Fop, he affected so much contempt of, Seneca.

2. Sometimes we catch a great writer deviating from his natural manner, and taking pains, as it were, to appear the very reverse of his proper character. Would you wish a stronger proof of his being seduced, at least for the time, by the charms of imitation?

Nothing is better known than the easy, elegant, agreeable vein of Voiture. Yet you have read his famous Letter to Balzac, and have been surprized, no doubt, at the forced, quaint, and puffy manner, in which it is written. The secret is, Voiture is aping Balzac from one end of this letter to the other. Whether to pay his court to him, or to laugh at him, or that perhaps, in the instant of writing, he really fancied an excellence in the style of that great man, is not easy to determine. An eminent French critic, I remember, is inclined to take it for a piece of mockery. At all events, we must needs esteem it an imitation.

3. This remark on the turn of a writer’s genius may be further applied to that of his temper or disposition.

The natural misanthropy of Swift may account for his thinking and speaking very often in the spirit of Rochefoucault, without any thought of taking from his Maxims, though he was an admirer of them. But if at any time we observe so humane and benevolent a man as Mr. Pope giving into this language, we say of course, “This is not his own, but an assumed manner.”

Or what say you to an instance that exemplifies both these observations together? The natural unaffected turn of Mr. Cowley’s manner, and the tender sensibility of his mind, are equally seen and loved in his prose-works, and in such of his poems as were written after a good model, or came from the heart. A clear sparkling fancy, softened with a shade of melancholy, made him, perhaps, of all our poets the most capable of excelling in the elegiac way, or of touching us in any way where a vein of easy language and moral sentiment is required. Who but laments then to see this fine genius perverted by the prevailing pedantry of his age, and carried away, against the bias of his nature, to an emulation of the rapturous, high-spirited Pindar?

I might give many more examples. But you will observe them in your own reading. I take the first that come to hand only to explain my meaning, which is, “That if you find a course of sentiments or cast of composition different from that, to which the writer’s situation, genius, or complexion would naturally lead him, you may well suspect him of imitation.”

Still it may be, these considerations are rather too general. I come to others more particular and decisive.

VI. It may be difficult sometimes to determine whether a single sentiment or image be derived or not. But when we see a cluster of them in two writers, applied to the same subject, one can hardly doubt that one of them has copied from the other.

A celebrated French moralist makes the following reflexions. “Quelle chimere est-ce donc que l’homme? Quelle nouveautè, quel chaos, quel sujet de contradiction? Juge de toutes choses, imbecile ver de terre; depositaire du vrai, amas d’incertitude; gloire, et rebut de l’univers.”

Turn now to the Essay on Man, and tell me if Mr. Pope did not work up the following lines out of these reflexions.

“Chaos of thought and passion, all confus’d;
Still by himself abus’d or disabus’d;
Created half to rise, and half to fall,
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.”

2. This conclusion is still more certain, when, together with a general likeness of sentiments, we find the same disposition of the parts, especially if that disposition be in no common form.

“Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet
With charm of earliest birds: pleasant the sun,
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flow’r,
Glist’ring with dew”——

and the rest of that fine speech in the IVth Book of Paradise Lost, which you remember so perfectly that I need not transcribe more of it.

Milton’s fancy, as usual, is rich and exuberant; but the conduct and application of his imagery shews, that the whole passage was shadowed out of those charming but simpler lines in the Danae of Euripides.

——φίλον μὲν φέγγος ἡλίου τόδε.
Καλὸν δὲ πόντου χεῦμ’ ἰδεῖν εὐήνεμον,
Γῆ τ’ ἠρινὸν θάλλουσα, πλούσιόν θ’ ὕδωρ,
Πολλῶν τ’ ἔπαινόν ἐστί μοι λέξαι καλῶν.
Ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν οὕτω λαμπρὸν, οὐδ’ ἰδεῖν, καλὸν,
Ὡς τοῖς ἄπαισι, καὶ πόθῳ δεδηγμένοις,
Παίδων νεογνῶν ἐν δόμοις ἰδεῖν φάος.

VII. There is little doubt in such cases as these. There needs not perhaps be much in the case, sometimes, of single sentiments or images. As where we find “a sentiment or image in two writers precisely the same, yet new and unusual.”

1. Thus we are told very reasonably, that Milton’s clust’ring locks is the copy of Apollonius’ ΠΛΟΚΑΜΟΙ ΒΟΤΡΥΟΕΝΤΕΣ. Obs. on Spenser, p. 80. For though the metaphor be a just one and very natural, yet there is perhaps no other authority for the use of it, but in these two poets. And Milton had certainly read Apollonius.

2. What the same critic observes of Milton’s

——“And curl the grove
In ringlets quaint”—

being taken from Jonson’s

When was old Sherwood’s head more quaintly curl’d?

is still more unquestionable. For here is a combination of signs to convict the former of imitation: Not only the singularity of the image, but the identity of expression, and, what I lay the most stress upon, the boldness of the figure, as employed by Milton. Jonson speaks of old Sherwood’s head, as curl’d. Milton, as conscious of his authority, drops the preparatory idea, and says at once, The grove curl’d.

Let me add to these, two more instances from the same poet.

3. Spenser tells us of

A little glooming light, much like a shade.
F. Q. c. II., s. 14.

Can you imagine that Milton did not take his idea from hence, when he said, in his Penseroso,

—glowing embers thro’ the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom?

4. Again, in his description of Paradise,

Flow’rs of all hues, and without thorn the rose.

Every poet of every time is lavish of his flowers on such occasions. But the rose without thorn is a rarity. And, though it was fine to imagine such an one in Paradise, could only be an Italian refinement. Tasso, you will think, is the original, when you have read the following lines;

Senza quei suoi pungenti ispidi dumi
Spiegò le foglie la purpurea Rosa.

5. Another instance, still more remarkable, may be taken from Mr. Pope. One of the most striking passages in the Essay on Man is the following,

Superior Beings, when of late they saw
A mortal man unfold all nature’s law,
Admir’d such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And shew’d a Newton, as we shew an ape.
Ep. ii. v. 31.

Can you doubt, from the singularity of this sentiment, that the great poet had his eye on Plato? who makes Socrates say, in allusion to a remark of Heraclitus, Ὅτι ἀνθρώπων ὁ σοφώτατος πρὸς θεὸν πίθηκος φανεῖται. Hipp. Major.

The application indeed is different. And it could not be otherwise. For the observation, which the Philosopher refers πρὸς θεὸν, is in the Poet given to superior Beings only. The consequence is, that the Ape is an object of derision in the former case, of admiration, in the latter.

To conclude this head, I will just observe to you, that, though the same uncommon sentiment in two writers be usually the effect of imitation, yet we cannot affirm this of Actors in real life. The reason is, when the situation of two men is the same, Nature will dictate the same sentiments more invariably than Genius. To give a remarkable instance of what I mean.

Tacitus relates, in the first book of his Annals, what passed in the senate on its first meeting after the death of Augustus. His politic successor carried it, for some time, with much apparent moderation. He wished, besides other reasons, to get himself solemnly recognized for Emperor by that Body, before he entered on the exercise of his new dignity. Dabat famæ, says the historian, ut vocatus electusque potiùs à Republicâ videretur, quàm per uxorium ambitum et senili adoptione irrepsisse. One of his courtiers would not be wanting to himself on such an occasion. When therefore several motions had been made in the Senate, concerning the honours to be paid to the memory of their late Prince, Valerius Messalla moved Renovandum per annos sacramentum in nomen Tiberii; in other words, that the oath of allegiance should be taken to Tiberius. This was the very point that Tiberius drove at. And the consciousness of it made him suspect that this motion might be thought to proceed from himself. He therefore asked Messalla, “Num, se mandante, eam sententiam promsisset?” His answer is in the following words. “Spontè dixisse, respondit; neque in iis, quæ ad rempublicam pertinerent, consilio nisi suo usurum, vel cum periculo offensionis.” Ea, concludes the historian, sola species adulandi supererat.

Now it is very remarkable, that we find in Ludlow’s memoirs, one of Cromwell’s officers, on the very same occasion, answering the Protector in the very same species of flattery.

Colonel William Jephson moved in the House that Cromwell might be made King. Cromwell took occasion, soon after, to reprove the Colonel for this proposition, telling him, that he wondered what he could mean by it. To which the other replied, “That while he was permitted the honour of sitting in that House, he must desire the liberty to discharge his conscience, though his opinion should happen to displease.”

Here we have a very striking coincidence of sentiment, without the least probability of imitation. For no body, I dare say, suspects Colonel William Jephson of stealing this refined stroke of adulation from Valerius Messalla. The truth is, the same situation, concurring with the same corrupt disposition, dictated this peculiar sentiment to the two courtiers. Yet, had these similar thoughts been found in two dramatic poets of the Augustan and Oliverian ages, we should probably have cried out, “An Imitation.” And with good reason. For, besides the possibility of an Oliverian poet’s knowing something of Tacitus, the speakers had then been feigned, not real personages. And it is not so likely that two such should agree in this sentiment: I mean, considering how new and particular it is. For, as to the more common and obvious sentiments, even dramatic speakers will very frequently employ the same, without affording any just reason to conclude that their prompters had turned plagiaries.

VIII. If to this singularity of a sentiment, you add the apparent harshness of it, especially when not gradually prepared (as such sentiments always will be by exact writers, when of their own proper invention), the suspicion grows still stronger. I just glanced at an instance of this sort in Milton’s curl’d grove. But there are others still more remarkable. Shall I presume for once to take an instance from yourself?

Your fine Ode to Memory begins with these very lyrical verses:

Mother of Wisdom! Thou whose sway
The throng’d ideal hosts obey;
Who bidst their ranks now vanish, now appear,
Flame in the van, and darken in the rear.

This sublime imagery has a very original air. Yet I, who know how familiar the best ancient and modern critics are to you, have no doubt that it is taken from Strada.

“Quid accommodatius, says he, speaking of your subject, Memory, quàm simulachrorum ingentes copias, tanquàm addictam ubique tibi sacramento militiam, eo inter se nexu ac fide conjunctam cohærentemque habere; ut sive unumquodque separatim, sive confertim universa, sive singula ordinatim in aciem proferre velis; nihil planè in tantâ rerum herbâ turbetur, sed alia procul atque in recessu sita prodeuntibus locum cedant; alia, se tota confestim promant atque in medium certò evocata prosiliant? Hoc tam magno, tam fido domesticorum agmine instructus animus, &c.” Prol. Acad. I.

Common writers know little of the art of preparing their ideas, or believe the very name of an Ode absolves them from the care of art. But, if this uncommon sentiment had been intirely your own, you, I imagine, would have dropped some leading idea to introduce it.

IX. You see with what a suspicious eye, we who aspire to the name of critics, examine your writings. But every poet will not endure to be scrutinized so narrowly.

1. B. Jonson, in his Prologue to the Sad Shepherd, is opening the subject of that poem. The sadness of his shepherd is

For his lost Love, who in the Trent is said
To have miscarried; ’las! what knows the head
Of a calm river, whom the feet have drown’d!

The reflexion in this place is unnecessary and even impertinent. Who besides ever heard of the feet of a river? Of arms, we have. And so it stood in Jonson’s original.

Greatest and fairest Empress, know you this,
Alas! no more than Thames’ calm head doth know
Whose meads his arms drown, or whose corn o’erflow.
Dr. Donne.

The poet is speaking of the corruption of the courts of justice, and the allusion is perfectly fine and natural. Jonson was tempted to bring it into his prologue by the mere beauty of the sentiment. He had a river at his disposal, and would not let slip the opportunity. But “his unnatural use” of it detects his “imitation.”

2. I don’t know whether you have taken notice of a miscarriage, something like this, in the most judicious of all the poets.

Theocritus makes Polypheme say,

Καὶ γὰρ θὴν οὐδ’ εἶδος ἔχω κακὸν, ὥς με λέγοντι,
Ἦ γὰρ πρὰν ἐς Πόντον ἐσέβλεπον· ἦν δὲ γαλάνα.

Nothing could be better fancied than to make this enormous son of Neptune use the sea for his looking-glass. But is Virgil so happy when his little land-man says,

Nec sum adeò informis: nuper me in littore vidi,
Cùm placidum ventis staret mare——

His wonderful judgment for once deserted him, or he might have retained the sentiment with a slight change in the application. For instance, what if he had said,

Certè ego me novi, liquidæque in imagine vidi
Nuper aquæ, placuitque mihi mea forma videnti.

It is a sort of curiosity, you say, to find Ovid reading a lesson to Virgil. I will dissemble nothing. The lines are, as I have cited them, in the 13th book of the Metamorphosis. But unluckily they are put into the mouth of Polypheme. So that instead of instructing one poet by the other, I only propose that they should make an exchange; Ovid take Virgil’s sea, and Virgil be contented with Ovid’s water. However this be, you may be sure the authority of the Prince of the Latin poets will carry it with admiring posterity above all such scruples of decorum. Nobody wonders therefore to read in Tasso,

————————————Non son’ io
Da disprezzar, se ben me stesso vidi
Nel liquido del mar, quando l’altr’ hieri
Taceano i venti, et ei giacea senz’ onda.

But of all the misappliers of this fine original sentiment, commend me to that other Italian, who made his shepherd survey himself, in a fountain indeed, but a fountain of his own weeping.

3. You will forgive my adding one other instance “of this vicious application of a fine thought.”

You remember those agreeable verses of Sir John Suckling,

“Tempests of winds thus (as my storms of grief
Carry my tears which should relieve my heart)
Have hurried to the thankless ocean clouds
And show’rs, that needed not at all the courtesy.
When the poor plains have languish’d for the want,
And almost burnt asunder.”——
Brennoralt. A. III. S. 1.

I don’t stay to examine how far the fancy of tears relieving the heart is allowable. But admitting the propriety of the observation, in the sense the poet intended it, the simile is applied and expressed with the utmost beauty. It accordingly struck the best writers of that time. Sprat, in his history of the Royal Society, is taking notice of the misapplication of philosophy to subjects of Religion. “That shower, says he, has done very much injury by falling on the sea, for which the shepherd, and the ploughman, called in vain: The wit of men has been profusely poured out on Religion, which needed not its help, and which was only thereby made more tempestuous: while it might have been more fruitfully spent, on some parts of philosophy, which have been hitherto barren, and might soon have been made fertile.” p. 25.

You see what wire-drawing here is to make the comparison, so proper in its original use, just and pertinent to a subject to which it had naturally no relation. Besides, there is an absurdity in speaking of a shower’s doing injury to the sea by falling into it. But the thing illustrated by this comparison requiring the idea of injury, he transfers the idea to the comparing thing. He would soften the absurdity, by running the comparison into metaphorical expression, but, I think, it does not remove it. In short, for these reasons, one might easily have inferred an Imitation, without that parenthesis to apologize for it—“To use that metaphor which an excellent poet of our nation turns to another purpose—”

But a poet of that time has no better success in the management of this metaphor, than the Historian.

Love makes so many hearts the prize
Of the bright Carlisle’s conqu’ring eyes;
Which she regards no more, than they
The tears of lesser beauties weigh.
So have I seen the lost clouds pour
Into the Sea an useless show’r;
And the vex’d Sailors curse the rain,
For which poor Shepherds pray’d in vain.
Waller’s Poems, p. 25.

The Sentiment stands thus: “She regards the captive hearts of others no more than those others—the tears of lesser beauties.” Thus, with much difficulty, we get to tears. And when we have them, the allusion to lost clouds is so strained (besides that he makes his shower both useless and injurious), that one readily perceives the poet’s thought was distorted by imitation.

X. The charge of Plagiarism is so disreputable to a great writer that one is not surprized to find him anxious to avoid the imputation of it. Yet “this very anxiety serves, sometimes, to fix it upon him.”

Mr. Dryden, in the Preface to his translation of Fresnoy’s Art of Painting, makes the following observation on Virgil: “He pretends sometimes to trip, but ’tis only to make you think him in danger of a fall when he is most secure. Like a skilful dancer on the Rope (if you will pardon the meanness of the similitude) who slips willingly and makes a seeming stumble, that you may think him in great hazard of breaking his neck; while at the same time he is only giving you a proof of his dexterity. My late Lord Roscommon was often pleased with this reflexion, &c.” p. 50.

His apology for the use of this simile, and his concluding with Lord Roscommon’s satisfaction at his remark, betray, I think, an anxiety to pass for original, under the consciousness of being but an imitator. So that if we were to meet with a passage, very like this, in a celebrated ancient, we could hardly doubt of its being copied by Mr. Dryden. What think you then of this observation in one of Pliny’s Letters, “Ut quasdam artes, ità eloquentiam nihil magis quàm ancipitia commendant. Vides qui fune in summa nituntur, quantos soleant excitare clamores, cùm jam jamque casuri videntur.” L. ix. Ep. 26.

Prior, one may observe, has acted more naturally in his Alma, and by so doing, though the resemblance be full as great, one is not so certain of his being an Imitator. The verses are, of Butler:

He perfect Dancer climbs the Rope,
And balances your fear and hope:
If after some distinguish’d leap,
He drops his Pole and seems to slip;
Strait gath’ring all his active strength
He rises higher half his length.
With wonder you approve his slight,
And owe your pleasure to your fright.
C. II.

Though the two last lines seem taken from the application of this similitude in Pliny, “Sunt enim maximè mirabilia, quæ maximè inexpectata, et maximè periculosa.”

XI. Writers are, sometimes, sollicitous to conceal themselves: At others, they are fond to proclaim their Imitation. “It is when they have a mind to shew their dexterity in contending with a great original.”

You remember these lines of Milton in his Comus,

Wisdom’s self
Oft seeks to sweet retired Solitude,
Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation,
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair’d.

On which Dr. Warburton has the following note. “Mr. Pope has imitated this thought and (as was always his way when he imitated) improved it.

“Bear me, some Gods! oh, quickly bear me hence
To wholesome Solitude, the nurse of Sense;
Where Contemplation prunes her ruffled wings,
And the free Soul looks down to pity Kings.

“Mr. Pope has not only improved the harmony, but the sense. In Milton, Contemplation is called the Nurse; in Pope, more properly Solitude: In Milton, Wisdom is said to prune her wings; in Pope, Contemplation is said to do it, and with much greater propriety, as she is of a soaring nature, and on that account is called by Milton himself, the Cherub Contemplation.”

One sees that Mr. Pope’s view was to surpass his original; “which, it is said, was always his way when he imitated.” The meaning is, when he purposely and professedly bent himself to Imitation; for then his fine genius taught him to seize every beauty, and his wonderful judgment, to avoid every defect or impropriety, in his author. And this distinction is very material to our passing a right judgment on the merit of Imitation. It is commonly said, that their imitations fall short of their originals. And they will do so, whatever the Genius of the Imitator be, if they are formed only on a general resemblance of the thought imitated. For an Inventor comprehends his own ideas more distinctly and fully, and of course expresses his purpose better, than a casual Imitator. But the case is different, when a good writer studies the passage from which he borrows. For then he not only copies, but improves on the first idea; and thus there will frequently (as in the case of Pope) be greater merit in the Copyist, than the original.

XII. We sometimes catch an Imitation lurking “in a licentious Paraphrase.” The ground of suspicion lies in the very complacency with which a writer expatiates on a borrowed sentiment. He is usually more reserved in adorning one of his own.

1. Aurelius Victor observes of Fabricius, “quòd difficiliùs ab honestate, quàm Sol à suo cursu, averti posset.”

Tasso flourishes a little on this thought;

Prima dal corso distornar la Luna
E le stelle potrà, che dal diritto
Torcere un sol mio passo—
C. x. S. 24.

Mr. Waller rises upon the Italian,

“where her love was due,
So fast, so faithful, loyal, and so true,
That a bold hand as soon might hope to force
The rowling lights of heav’n, as change her course.”
On the Death of Lady Rich.

But Mr. Cowley, knowing what authority he had for the general sentiment, gives the reins to his fancy and wantons upon it without measure.

Virtue was thy Life’s centre, and from thence
Did silently and constantly dispense
The gentle vigorous influence
To all the wide and fair circumference:
And all the parts upon it lean’d so easilie,
Obey’d the mighty force so willinglie,
That none could discord or disorder see
In all their contrarietie.
Each had his motion natural and free,
And the whole no more mov’d, than the whole world could be.
Brutus.

2. The ingenious author of the Observations on Spenser (from which fine specimen of his critical talents one is led to expect great things) directs us to another imitation of this sort.

Tasso had said,

Cosi a le belle lagrime le piume
Si bagna Amore, e gode al chiaro lume.

On which short hint Spenser has raised the following luxuriant imagery,

The blinded archer-boy,
Like lark in show’r of rain,
Sate bathing of his wings,
And glad the time did spend
Under those crystal drops,
Which fall from her fair eyes,
And at their brightest beams
Him proyn’d in lovely wise.

3. I will just add two more examples of the same kind; chiefly, because they illustrate an observation, very proper to be attended to on this subject; which is, “That in this display of a borrowed thought, the Imitation will generally fall short of the Original, even though the borrower be the greater Genius.”

The Italian poet, just now quoted, says sublimely of the Night,

—Usci la Notte, è sotto l’ali
Menò il silentio—
C. v. S. 79.

Milton has given a paraphrase of this passage, but very much below his original,

Now came still ev’ning on, and twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompany’d—

The striking part of Tasso’s picture, is, “Night’s bringing in Silence under her wings.” So new and singular an idea as this had detected an Imitation. Milton contents himself, then, with saying simply, Silence accompany’d. However, to make amends, as he thought, for this defect, Night itself, which the Italian had merely personized, the English poet not only personizes, but employs in a very becoming office:

Now came still ev’ning on, and twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad.

Every body will observe a little blemish, in this fine couplet. He should not have used the epithet still, when he intended to add,

Silence accompanied—

But there is a worse fault in this Imitation. To hide it, he speaks of Night’s livery. When he had done that, to speak of her wings, had been ungraceful. Therefore he is forced to say obscurely as well as simply, Silence accompany’d: And so loses a more noble image for a less noble one. The truth is, they would not stand together. Livery belongs to human grandeur; wings to divine or celestial. So that in Milton’s very attempt to surpass his original, he put it out of his power to employ the circumstance that most recommended it.

He is not happier on another occasion. Spenser had said with his usual simplicity,

“Virtue gives herself light thro’ darkness for to wade,”
F. Q. B. 1.

Milton catched at this image, and has run it into a sort of paraphrase, in those fine lines,

“Virtue could see to do what virtue would
By her own radiant light, tho’ Sun and Moon
Were in the flat sea sunk—”
Comus.

In Spenser’s line we have the idea of Virtue dropt down into a world, all over darkened with vice and error. Virtue excites the light of truth to see all around her, and not only dissipate the neighbouring darkness, but to direct her course in pursuing her victory and driving her enemy out of it; the arduousness of which exploit is well expressed by—thro’ darkness for to WADE. On the contrary, Milton, in borrowing, substitutes the physical for the moral idea—by her own radiant light—and tho’ Sun and Moon were in the flat sea sunk. It may be asked, how this happened? Very naturally, Milton was caught with the obvious imagery, which he found he could display to more advantage; and so did not enough attend to the noble sentiment that was couched under it.

XIII. These are instances of a paraphrastical licence in dilating on a famous Sentiment or Image. The ground is the same, only flourished upon by the genius of the Imitator. At times we find him practising a different art; “not merely spreading, as it were, and laying open the same sentiment, but adding to it, and by a new and studied device improving upon it.” In this case we naturally conclude that the refinement had not been made, if the plain and simple thought had not preceded and given rise to it. You will apprehend my meaning by what follows.

1. Shakespear had said of Henry IV^th,

—He cannot long hold out these pangs;
The incessant care and labour of his mind
Hath wrought the mure, that should confine it in,
So thin, that life look through, and will break out.
Hen. IV. A. 4.

You have, here, the thought in its first simplicity. It was not unnatural, after speaking of the body, as a case or tenement of the Soul, the mure that confines it, to say, that as that case wears away and grows thin, life looks through, and is ready to break out.

Daniel, by refining on this sentiment, if by nothing else, shews himself to be the copyist. Speaking of the same Henry, he observes,

And Pain and Grief, inforcing more and more,
Besieg’d the hold that could not long defend;
Consuming so all the resisting store
Of those provisions Nature deign’d to lend,
As that the Walls, worn thin, permit the mind
To look out thorough, and his frailty find.

Here we see, not simply that Life is going to break through the infirm and much-worn habitation, but that the Mind looks through and finds his frailty, that it discovers, that Life will soon make his escape. I might add, that the four first lines are of the nature of the Paraphrase, considered in the last article: And that the expression of the others is too much the same to be original. But we are not yet come to the head of expression. And I choose to confine myself to the single point of view we have before us.

Daniel’s improvement, then, looks like the artifice of a man that would outdo his Master. Though he fails in the attempt: for his ingenuity betrays him into a false thought. The mind, looking through, does not find its own frailty, but the frailty of the building it inhabits. However, I have endeavoured to rectify this mistake in my explanation.

The truth is, Daniel was not a man to improve upon Shakespear. But now comes a writer, that knew his business much better. He chuses to employ this well-worn image, or rather to alter it a little and then employ it, for the conveyance of a very new fancy. If the mind could look through a thin body, much more one that was cracked and battered. And if it be for looking through at all, he will have it look to good purpose, and find, not its frailty only, but much other useful knowledge.

The lines are Mr. Waller’s, and in the best manner of that very refined writer.

Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become
As they draw near to their eternal home.
The Soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d,
Lets in new light thro’ chinks that time has made.

2. After all, these conceits, I doubt, are not much to your taste. The instance I am going to give, will afford you more pleasure. Is there a passage in Milton you read with more admiration, than this in the Penseroso?

Entice the dewy-feather’d sleep;
And let some strange mysterious dream
Wave at his wings in airy stream;
Of lively portraiture display’d
Softly on my eye-lids laid.

Would you think it possible now that the ground-work of this fine imagery should be laid in a passage of Ben Jonson? Yet so we read, or seem to read, in his Vision of Delight.

Break, Phant’sy, from thy cave of cloud,
And spread thy purple wings:
Create of airy forms a stream,
And tho’ it be a waking dream,
Yet let it like an odour rise
To all the senses here,
And fall like sleep upon their eyes
Or musick in their ear.

It is a delicate matter to analyze such passages as these; which, how exquisite soever in the poetry, when estimated by the fine phrenzy of a Genius, hardly look like sense when given in plain prose. But if you give me leave to take them in pieces, I will do it, at least, with reverence. We find then, that Fancy is here employed in one of her nicest operations, the production of a day-dream; which both poets represent as an airy form, or forms streaming in the air, gently falling on the eye-lids of her entranced votary. So far their imagery agrees. But now comes the mark of imitation I would point out to you. Milton carries the idea still further, and improves finely upon it, in the conception as well as expression. Jonson evokes fancy out of her cave of cloud, those cells of the mind, as it were, in which during her intervals of rest, and when unemploy’d, fancy lies hid; and bids her, like a Magician, create this stream of forms. All this is just and truly poetical. But Milton goes further. He employs the dewy-feather’d sleep as his Minister in this machinery. And the mysterious day-dream is seen waving at his wings in airy stream. Jonson would have Fancy immediately produce this Dream. Milton more poetically, because in more distinct and particular imagery, represents Fancy as doing her work by means of sleep; that soft composure of the mind abstracted from outward objects, in which it yields to these phantastic impressions.

You see then a wonderful improvement in this addition to the original thought. And the notion of dreams waving at the wings of sleep is, by the way, further justified by what Virgil feigns of their sticking or rather fluttering on the leaves of his magic tree in the infernal regions. But it is curious to observe how this improvement itself arose from hints suggested by his original. From Jonson’s dream, falling, like sleep upon their eyes, Milton took his feather’d sleep, which he impersonates so properly; And from Phant’sy’s spreading her purple wings, a circumstance, not so immediately connected with Jonson’s design of creating of airy forms a stream, he catched the idea of Sleep spreading her wings; and to good purpose, since the airy stream of forms was to wave at them.

However, Jonson’s image is, in itself, incomparable. It is taken from a winged insect breaking out of its Aurelia state, its cave of cloud, as it is finely called: Not unlike that of Mr. Pope,

So spins the Silk-worm small its slender store,
And labours till it clouds itself all o’er.
IV. Dunc. v. 253.

And nothing can be juster than this allusion. For the ancients always pictured Fancy and Human-love with Insect’s wings.

XIV. Thus then, whether the poet prevaricates, enlarges, or adds, still we frequently find some latent circumstance, attending his management, that convicts him of Imitation. Nay, he is not safe even when he denies himself these liberties; I mean when he only glances at his original. “For, in this case, the borrowed sentiment usually wants something of that perspicuity which always attends the first delivery of it.” This Rule may be considered as the Reverse of the last. A writer, sometimes, takes a pleasure to refine on a plain thought: Sometimes (and that is usually when the original sentiment is well known and fully developed) he does not so much as attempt to open and explain it.

A poet of the last age has the following lines, on the subject of Religion:

Religion now is a young Mistress here,
For which each man will fight, and dye at least;
Let it alone awhile, and ’t will become
A kind of married wife; people will be
Content to live with it in quietness.

Suckling says this in his Tragedy of Brennoralt; which is a Satire throughout on the rising troubles of that time. Butler has taken the thought and applied it on the same occasion:

When hard words, jealousies, and fears
Set folks together by the ears,
And make them fight, like mad or drunk,
For dame Religion, as for Punk.

Setting aside the difference between the burlesque and serious style, one easily sees that this sentiment is borrowed from Suckling. It has not the clear and full exposition of an original thought. Butler only represents men as drunk with Religion and fighting for it as for a Punk. The other gives the reason of the Debauch, namely, fondness for a new face; and tells us, besides, how things would subside into peace or indifference on a nearer and more familiar acquaintance. One could expect no less from the Inventor of this humorous thought; a Borrower might be content to allude to it.

XV. This last consideration puts me in mind of another artifice to conceal a borrowed sentiment. Nothing lies more open to discovery than a Simile in form, especially if it be a remarkable one. These are a sort of purpurei panni which catch all eyes; and, if the comparison be not a writer’s own, he is almost sure to be detected. The way then that refined Imitators take to conceal themselves, in such a case, is to run the Similitude into Allegory. We have a curious instance in Mr. Pope, who has succeeded so well in the attempt, that his plagiarism, I believe, has never been suspected.

The verses, I have in my eye, are these fine ones, addressed to Lord Bolingbroke,

Oh, while along the stream of time thy name
Expanded flies, and gathers all it’s fame,
Say, shall my little Bark attendant sail,
Pursue the triumph, and partake the Gale?

What think you, now, of these admired verses? Are they, besides their other beauties, perfectly original? You will be able to resolve this question, by turning to the following passage in a Poet, Mr. Pope was once fond of, I mean Statius,

Sic ubi magna novum Phario de litore puppis
Solvit iter, jamque innumeros utrinque rudentes
Lataque veliferi porrexit brachia mali
Invasitque vias, in eodem angusta phaselus
Æquore, et immensi partem sibi vendicat Austri.
Silv. l. V. I. v. 242.

But, especially, this other,

—immensæ veluti CONNEXA carinæ
Cymba minor, cum sævit hyems, pro parte, furentes
Parva receptat aquas, et EODEM VOLVITUR AUSTRO.
Silv. l. I. iv. v. 120.

XVI. I release you from this head of Sentiments, with observing that we sometimes conclude a writer to have had a celebrated original in his eye, when “without copying the peculiar thought, or stroke of imagery, he gives us only a copy of the impression, it had made upon him.”

1. In delivering this rule, I will not dissemble that I myself am copying, or rather stealing from a great critic: From one, however, who will not resent this theft; as indeed he has no reason, for he is so prodigiously rich in these things, as in others of more value, that what he neglects or flings away, would make the fortune of an ordinary writer. The person I mean is the late Editor of Shakespear, who, in an admirable note on Julius Cæsar, taking occasion to quote that passage of Cato,

O think what anxious moments pass between
The birth of plots, and their last fatal periods,
Oh, ’tis a dreadful interval of time,
Fill’d up with horror all, and big with death,

observes “that Mr. Addison was so struck and affected with the terrible graces of Shakespear (in the passage he is there considering) that, instead of imitating his author’s sentiments, he hath, before he was aware, given us only the copy of his own impressions made by them. For,

Oh, ’tis a dreadful interval of time,
Fill’d up with horror all, and big with death,

are but the affections raised by such forcible images as these,

——All the Int’rim is
Like a Phantasma, or a hideous dream
——The state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an Insurrection.”

The observation is new and finely applied. Give me leave to suppose that the following is an instance of the same nature.

2. Milton on a certain occasion says of Death, that she

“Grinn’d horrible a ghastly smile—”
P. L. B. II. v. 846.

This representation is supposed by his learned Editor to be taken from Homer, from Statius, or from the Italian poets. A certain friend of ours, not to be named without honour, and therefore not at all on so slight an occasion, suggests that it might probably be copied from Spenser’s,

Grinning griesly—
B. V. c. 12.

And there is the more likelihood in this conjecture, as the poet a little before had call’d death—the griesly terror—v. 704. But after all, if he had any preceding writer in view, I suspect it might be Fletcher; who, in his Wife for a Month, has these remarkable lines,

The game of Death was never play’d more nobly,
The meagre thief grew wanton in his mischiefs,
And his shrunk hollow eyes smil’d on his ruin.

The word Ghastly, I would observe, gives the precise idea of shrunk hollow eyes, and looks as if Milton, in admiration of his original, had only looked out for an epithet to Death’s smile, as he found it pictured in Fletcher.

Thus much, then, may perhaps serve for an illustration of the first part of this Inquiry. We have found out several marks, and applied them to various passages in the best writers, from which we may reasonably enough be allowed to infer an Imitation in point of Sentiment. For what respect the other part of Expression, this is an easier task, and will be dispatched in few words.

Only you will indulge me in an observation or two, to prevent your expecting from me more than I undertake to perform.

When I speak of Expression, then I mean to confine myself “to single words of sentences, or at most the structure of a passage.” When Imitation is carried so far as to affect the general cast of language, or what we call a Style, no great sagacity is, perhaps, required to detect it. Thus the Ciceroniani, if they were not ambitious of proclaiming themselves, are discoverable at the first glance. And the later Roman poets, as well as the modern Latin versifiers, are, to the best of their power, Virgilian. The thing is perhaps still easier in a living language; especially if that language be our own. Milton and Pope, if they have made but few poets, have made many imitators; so many, that we are ready to complain there is hardly an original poet left.

Another point seems of no importance in the present inquiry. I know, it is asked, How far a writer casually or designedly imitates? that is, whether he copies another from memory only, without recollecting, at the time, the passage from which his expression is drawn, or purposely, and with full knowledge of his original. And this consideration is of much weight, as I have shewn at large, where the question is concerning the credit of the supposed imitator. For this is affected by nothing but direct and intended imitation. But as we are looking at present only for those marks in the expression which shew it not to be original, it is enough that the resemblance is such as cannot well be accounted for but on the supposition of some sort of commerce; whether immediately perceived by the writer himself, is not material. ’Tis true, this observation is applicable to sentiments as well as expression; and I have not pretended to give the preceding articles, as proofs, or even presumptions, in all cases, that the later writer copied intentionally from a former. But there is this difference in the two cases. Sentiments may be strikingly similar, or even identical, without the least thought, or even effect, of a preceding original. But the identity of expression, except in some few cases of no importance, is, in the same language, where the writer speaks entirely from himself, an almost impossible thing. And you will be of this mind, if you reflect on the infinitely varied lights in which the same image or sentiment presents itself to different writers; the infinitely varied purpose they have to serve by it; or where it happens to strike precisely in the same manner, and is directed precisely to the same end, the infinite combinations of words in which it may be expressed. To all which you may add, that the least imaginable variation, either in the terms or the structure of them, not only destroys the identity, but often disfigures the resemblance to that degree that we hardly know it to be a resemblance.

So that you see, the marks of imitated or, if you will, derived expression are much less equivocal, than of sentiment. We may pronounce of the former without hesitation, that it is taken, when corresponding marks in the latter would only authorise us to conclude that it was the same or perhaps similar.

I need not use more words to convince you, that the distinction of casual and design’d imitation is still of less significancy in this class of imitations, than the other.

And with this preamble, more particular perhaps and circumstantial than was necessary, I now proceed to lay before you some of those signs of derived expression, which I conceive to be unequivocal. If they are so, they will generally appear at first sight; so that I shall have little occasion to trouble you, as I did before, with my comments. It will be sufficient to deliver the rule, and to exemplify it.

I. An identity of expression, especially if carried on through an intire sentence, is the most certain proof of imitation.

Mr. Waller of Sacharissa,

So little care of what is done below
Hath the bright dame, whom heav’n affecteth so;
Paints her, ’tis true, with the same hand which spreads
Like glorious colours thro’ the flow’ry meads;
When lavish nature with her best attire
Cloaths the gay spring, the season of desire.

Mr. Fenton takes notice that the poet is copying from the Muiopotmos of Spenser.

To the gay gardens his unstaid desire
Him wholly carried to refresh his sprights:
There lavish Nature, in her best attire,
Pours forth sweet odours and alluring sights.

We shall see presently that, besides the identity of expression, there is also another mark of imitation in this passage.

II. But less than this will do, where the similarity of thought, and application of it, is striking.

Mr. Pope says divinely well,

Shall burning Ætna, if a sage requires,
Forget to thunder and recall its fires?
On air or sea new motions be impress’d,
Oh blameless Bethel! to relieve thy breast?
When the loose mountain trembles from on high,
Shall gravitation cease if you go by?
Or some old temple nodding to its fall
For Chartres’ head reserve the hanging wall?
Essay IV. V. 123.

Now turn to Mr. Wollaston, an easy natural writer (where his natural manner is not stiffened by a mathematical pedantry) and abounding in fine sallies of the imagination; and see if the poet did not catch his expression, as well as the fire of his conception in this place, from the philosopher:

“As to the course of Nature, if a good man be passing by an infirm building, just in the article of falling, can it be expected that God should suspend the force of gravitation till he is gone by, in order to his deliverance; or can we think it would be increased, and the fall hastened, if a bad man was there, only that he might be caught, crushed, and made an example? If a man’s safety or prosperity should depend upon winds or rains, must new motions be impressed upon the atmosphere, and new directions given to the floating parts of it, by some extraordinary and new influence from God?”

III. Sometimes the original expression is not taken but paraphrased; and the writer disguises himself in a kind of circumlocution. Yet this artifice does not conceal him, especially if some fragments, as it were, of the inventor’s phrase are found dispersedly in the imitation.

For in the secret of her troubled thought
A doubtful combat love and honour fought.
Fairfax’s Tasso, B. IV. S. 70.

Hence Mr. Waller,

There public care and private passion fought
A doubtful combat in his noble thought.
Poems, p. 14.

Public care is the periphrasis of honour, and private passion, of love. For the rest you see—disjecti membra poetæ.

IV. An imitation is discoverable, when there is but the least particle of the original expression, “by a peculiar and no very natural arrangement of words.”

In Fletcher’s faithful Shepherdess, the speaker says,

— — — — — — — In thy face
Shines more awful majesty,
Than dull weak mortality
Dare with misty eyes behold,
And live—

The writer glanced, but very improperly on such an occasion, at Exod. xxxiii. 20. “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.”

V. An uncommon construction of words not identical, especially if the subject be the same, or the ideas similar, will look like imitation.

Milton says finely of the Swan,

— — — — —The Swan with arched neck
Between her white wings mantling proudly ROWS
Her state—

I should think he might probably have that line of Fletcher in his head,

How like a Swan she SWIMS HER PACE!

The expression, you see, is very like. ’Tis true, the image in Milton is much nobler. It is taken from a barge of state in a public procession.

VI. We may even pronounce that a single word is taken, when it is new and uncommon.

Milton’s calling a ray of light—a levell’d rule in Comus v. 340, is so particular that, when one reads in Euripides ἡλίου ΚΑΝΩΝ σαφὴς, Suppl. v. 650, one has no doubt that the learned poet translated the Greek word.

Again, Mr. Pope’s,

“Or ravish’d with the whistling of a name,”

is for the same reason, if there were no other points of likeness, copied from Mr. Cowley’s

“Charm’d with the foolish whistlings of a name.”
Transl. of Virgil’s O! fortunati nimium, &c.

VII. An improper use of uncommon expression, in very exact writers, will sometimes create a suspicion. Milton had called the sight indifferently visual nerve and visual ray, P. L. iii. 620. xi. 415. Mr. Pope in his Messiah thought he might take the same liberty, but forgot that though the visual nerve might be purged from film, the visual ray could not. Had Mr. Pope invented this bold expression, he would have seen to apply his metaphor more properly.

VIII. Where the word or phrase is foreign, there is, if possible, still less doubt.

— — — —at last his sail-broad vans
He spreads for flight.
Milton, P. L. ii. v. 927.

Most certainly from Tasso’s,

—Spiega al grand volo i vanni. ix.

And that of Jonson in his Sejanus,

O! what is it proud slime will not believe
Of his own worth, to hear it equal prais’d
Thus with the Gods—
A. 1.

from Juvenal’s

— — —nihil est quod credere de se
Non possit, cum laudatur Diis æqua potestas.

IX. Conclude the same when the expression is antique, in the writer’s own language.

In Mr. Waller’s Panegyric on the Protector,

So, when a Lion shakes his dreadful mane,
And angry grows, if he that first took pain
To tame his youth, approach the haughty beast,
He bends to him, but frights away the rest.

The antique formality of the phrase that first took pain, for, that first took the pains, in so pure and modern a speaker, as this poet, looks suspicious. He took it, as he found it in an older writer. There are many other marks of imitation, but we had needed no more than this to make the discovery:

So when a lion shakes his dreadful mane,
And beats his tail, with courage proud, and wroth,
If his commander come, who first took pain
To tame his youth, his lofty crest down go’th.
Fairfax’s Tasso, B. VIII. S. 83.

X. You observe in most of the instances, here given, besides other marks, there is an identity of rhyme. And this circumstance of itself, in our poetry, is no bad argument of imitation, particularly when joined to a similarity of expression. And the reason is, the rhyme itself very naturally brings the expression along with it.

1. “Stuck o’er with titles, and hung round with strings,
That thou mayst be by Kings, or whores of Kings.”
Essay on Man, E. IV. V. 205.

from Mr. Cowley in his translation of Hor. 1. ep. 10.

“To Kings, or to the favourites of Kings.”

2. “Such is the world’s great harmony, that springs
From order, union, full consent of things.”
Ep. III. 295.

from Denham’s Cowper’s Hill,

“Wisely she knew the harmony of things
As well as that of sounds from discord springs.”

3. “Far as the solar walk, or milky way.”
Essay on Man, Ep. I. V. 102.

from Mr. Dryden’s Pindaric Poem to the memory of K. Charles II.

“Out of the solar walk, or heav’n’s high way.”

Though these consonancies chyming in the writer’s head, he might not always be aware of the imitation.

XI. In the examples, just given, there was no reason to suspect the poet was imitating, till you met with the original. Then indeed the rhyme leads to the discovery. But “if an exact writer falls into a flatness of expression for the sake of rhyme, you may ev’n previously conclude that he has some precedent for it.”

In the famous lines,

Let modest Foster, if he will, excell
Ten metropolitans in preaching well.
Ep. to Satires, v. 131.

I used to suspect that the phrase of preaching well so unlike the concise accuracy of Pope, would not have been hazarded by him, if some eminent writer, though perhaps of an older age and less correct taste than his own, had not set the example. But I had no doubt left when I happened on the following couplet in Mr. Waller.

Your’s sounds aloud, and tells us you excell
No less in courage, than in singing well.
Poem to Sir W. D’Avenant.

Our great poet is more happy in the application of these rhymes on another occasion,

Let such teach others, who themselves excell,
And censure freely, who have written well.
Essay on Crit. v. 15.

The reason is apparent. But here he glanced at the Duke of Buckingham’s,

“Nature’s chief master-piece is writing well.”

XII. “The same pause and turn of expression are pretty sure symptoms of imitation.” These minute resemblances do not usually spring from Nature, which, when the sentiment is the same, hath a hundred ways of its own, of giving it to us.

1. That noble verse in the essay on criticism, v. 625.

“For fools rush in, where angels dare not tread,”

is certainly fashion’d upon Shakespear’s,

——————————“the world is grown so bad
That wrens make prey, where angels dare not perch.”
Rich. III. A. I. S. III.

2. The verses to Sir W. Trumbal in Past. 1.

“And carrying with you all the world can boast,
To all the world illustriously are lost.”

from Waller’s Maid’s Tragedy alter’d,

Happy he that from the world retires
And carries with him what the world admires.
p. 215. Lond. 1712.

XIII. When to these marks the same Rhyme is added, the case is still more evident.

“Men would be angels, angels would be Gods.”
Essay on Man, Ep. I. v. 126.

Without all question from Sir Fulk Grevil,

Men would be tyrants, tyrants would be Gods.
Works, Lond. 1633. p. 73.

XIV. The seeming quaintness and obscurity of an expression frequently indicates imitation. As when in Fletcher’s Pilgrim we read,

“Hummings of higher nature vex his brains.”
A. II. S. 2.

Had the idea been original, the poet had expressed it more plainly. In leaving it thus, he pays his reader the compliment to suppose, that he will readily call to mind,

aliena negotia centum
Per caput, et circa saliunt latus;

which sufficiently explains it: As we may see from Mr. Cowley’s application of the same passage. “Aliena negotia centum per caput et centum saliunt latus. A hundred businesses of other men fly continually about his head and ears, and strike him in the face like Dorres.” Disc. of Liberty. And still more clearly, from Mr. Pope’s,

“A hundred other men’s affairs,
Like bees, are humming in my ears.”

Learned writers of quick parts abound in these delicate allusions. It makes a principal part of modern elegancy to glance in this oblique manner at well-known passages in the classics.

XV. I will trouble you with but one more note of imitated expression, and it shall be the very reverse of the last. When the passages glanced at are not familiar, the expression is frequently minute and circumstantial, corresponding to the original in the order, turn, and almost number of the words. The reasons are, that, the imitated passage not being known, the imitator may give it, as he finds it, with safety, or at least without offence; and that, besides, the force and beauty of it would escape us in a brief and general allusion. The following are instances:

1. “Man never is, but always to be blest.”
Essay on Man, Ep. I. v. 69.

from Manilius,

Victuros agimus semper, nec vivimus unquam.

2. —“Hope never comes,
That comes to all.”—
Milton, P. L. I. v. 66.

from Euripides in the Troad. v. 676.

—οὐδ’ ὃ πᾶσι λείπεται βροτοῖς,
Ξύνεστιν ἐλπὶς.—

3. But above all, that in Jonson’s Catiline,

“He shall die:
Shall was too slowly said: He’s dying: That
Is still too slow: He’s dead.”

from Seneca’s Hercules furens, A. III.

“Lycus Creonti debitas poenas dabit:
Lentum est, dabit; dat: hoc quoque est lentum; dedit.”

You have now, Sir, before you a specimen of those rules, which I have fancied might be fairly applied to the discovery of imitations, both in regard to the SENSE and EXPRESSION of great writers. I would not pretend that the same stress is to be laid on all; but there may be something, at least, worth attending to in every one of them. It were easy, perhaps, to enumerate still more, and to illustrate these I have given with more agreeable citations. Yet I have spared you the disgust of considering those vulgar passages, which every body recollects and sets down for acknowledged imitations. And these I have used are taken from the most celebrated of the ancient and modern writers. You may observe indeed that I have chiefly drawn from our own poets; which I did, not merely because I know you despise the pedantry of confining one’s self to learned quotations, but because I think we are better able to discern those circumstances, which betray an imitation, in our own language than in any other. Amongst other reasons, an identity of words and phrases, upon which so much depends, especially in the article of expression, is only to be had in the same language. And you are not to be told with how much more certainty we determine of the degree of evidence, which such identity affords for this purpose, in a language we speak, than in one which we only lisp or spell.

But you will best understand of what importance this affair of expression is to the discovery of imitations, by considering how seldom we are able to fix an imitation on Shakespear. The reason is, not, that there are not numberless passages in him very like to others in approved authors, or that he had not read enough to give us a fair hold of him; but that his expression is so totally his own, that he almost always sets us at defiance.

You will ask me, perhaps, now I am on this subject, how it happened that Shakespear’s language is every where so much his own as to secure his imitations, if they were such, from discovery; when I pronounce with such assurance of those of our other poets. The answer is given for me in the Preface to Mr. Theobald’s Shakespear; though the observation, I think, is too good to come from that critic. It is, that, though his words, agreeably to the state of the English tongue at that time, be generally Latin, his phraseology is perfectly English: An advantage, he owed to his slender acquaintance with the Latin idiom. Whereas the other writers of his age, and such others of an older date as were likely to fall into his hands, had not only the most familiar acquaintance with the Latin idiom, but affected on all occasions to make use of it. Hence it comes to pass, that, though he might draw sometimes from the Latin (Ben Jonson, you know, tells us, He had less Greek) and the learned English writers, he takes nothing but the sentiment; the expression comes of itself, and is purely English.

I might indulge in other reflexions, and detain you still further with examples taken from his works. But we have lain, as the Poet speaks, on these primrose beds, too long. It is time that you now rise to your own nobler inventions; and that I return myself to those, less pleasing, perhaps, but more useful studies from which your friendly sollicitations have called me. Such as these amusements are, however, I cannot repent me of them, since they have been innocent at least, and even ingenuous; and, what I am fondest to recollect, have helped to enliven those many years of friendship we have passed together in this place. I see indeed, with regret, the approach of that time, which threatens to take me both from it, and you. But, however fortune may dispose of me, she cannot throw me to a distance, to which your affection and good wishes, at least, will not follow me.

And for the rest,

“Be no unpleasing melancholy mine.”

The coming years of my life will not, I foresee, in many respects, be what the past have been to me. But, till they take me from myself, I must always bear about me the agreeable remembrance of our friendship.

I am,
Dear Sir,
Your most affectionate
Friend and Servant.
Cambridge,
Aug. 15, 1757.

INDEX
TO THE
TWO VOLUMES.