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.