found it in an older writer. There are many other marks of imitation; but we had needed no more than this to make the dif covery : 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 creft down go'th, Fairfax's Tao, B. VIII. S.83. X. You obferve in most of the inftances here given, besides other marks, there is an identity of rhyme. And this circumftance of itfelf, in our poetry, is no bad argument of imitation, particularly when joined to a fimilarity of expreffion. And the reafon is, the rhyme itself very naturally brings the expreffion along with it. 1. “Stuck o'er with titles, and hung round with strings, That thou may'ft be by Kings, or whores of Kings, Effay on Man, Ep. iv. 205 from Mr. Cowley, in his tranflation of Hor. I. ep.10. «To Kings, or to the favourites of Kings. 10 2. Such is the world's great harmony, that springs From order, union, full consent of things. from Denham's Cowper's Hill, Ep. 111. 295. "Wifely she knew the harmony of things, As well as that of founds, from difcord fprings." 27 Far as the folar walk, or milky way." Effay on Man, Ep. 1. 102. X from Mr. Dryden's Pindaric Poem to the memory of K. Charles II. "Out of the folar walk, or heav'n's high way though, thefe confonancies chyming in the writer's head, he might not always be aware of the imitation." XI. In the examples juft given, there « was no reason to fufpect the poet was imitating, till you met with the original. Then indeed the rhyme leads to the difcovery. But “ if an exact writer falls into a flatness of expreffion for the fake of rhyme, you Q4 may may even previously conclude that he has fome precedent for it." In the famous lines Let modeft Fofter, if he will, excell Ep. to Satires, ver. 131, of I used to fufpect, that the phrafe of preaching well, fo unlike the concife accuracy Pope, would not have been hazarded by him, if fome eminent writer, though perhaps of an older age and lefs correct tafte than his own, had not fet the example. But I had no doubt left, when I happened on the following couplet in Mr. Waller: Your's found aloud, and tell us you excell Poem to Sir W. D'Avenant. Our great poet is more happy in the application of these rhymes on another occafion : Let fuch teach others, who themselves excell, Effay on Crit. ver. 15. The The reafon is apparent. But here he glanced at the Duke of Buckingham's, "Nature's chief mafter-piece is writing well." XII. "The fame pause and turn of expreffion are pretty fure fymptoms of imitation." These minute resemblances do not usually spring from Nature, which, when the fentiment is the fame, hath a hundred, ways of its own of giving it to us. 1. That noble verse in the Effay on Criticism, ver. 625, "For fools rush in, where angels dare not tread," is certainly fashion'd upon Shakespeare's, -"the world is grown fo bad, "That wrens make prey, perch." where angels dare not Rich. III. A. I. S. III. 2. The verses to Sir W. Trumbal, in Paft. I. "And carrying with you all the world can boast To all the world illustriously are loft.” from Waller's Maid's Tragedy altered, Happy Happy is he that from the world retires, XIII. When to thefe marks the fame without all queftion, from Sir Fulk Grevil, Men would be tyrants, tyrants would be Gods. Works, Lond. 1633, P. 73. XIV. The feeming quaintnefs and ob fcurity of an expreffion frequently indicates imitation. As when in Fletcher's Pilgrim we read, "Hummings of higher nature vex his brains." A. 11. S. 2. poet Had the idea been original, the had expreffed it more plainly. In leaving it thus, he pays his reader the compliment to fuppofe, that he will readily call to mind, aliena negotia centum Per caput, et circa fafiunt latus; which fufficiently explains it: as we may fee from Mr. Cowley's application of the fame |