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.