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M DCC LVI.

A

LETTER to Mr. MASON.

I

DEAR SIR,

CHANC'D to fay in the difcourfe on POETICAL IMITATION, "that coincidencies of a certain "kind, and in a certain degree, cannot fail to convict 66 a writer of Imitation." You are fometimes curious to know what these coincidencies are, and have thought that an attempt to point them out would furnifh an useful Supplement to what I have written on this fubject. You urge me too to this attempt by the promise, it seems, I made of engaging in it. But have you obferv'd what I faid at the fame time, "That fuch a defign would require, befides a care. "ful examination of the workings of the human “mind, an exact fcrutiny of the most original and "most imitative writers." a And, with all your par a DISC. on POET. IMIT. p. 209. 2d Ed.

tiality 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 amongst these I will not difown that the Poets of antient and modern fame have had their full fhare in my affection. But You, who love me fo well, would not wish me to pafs more of my life in these flowery regions; which tho' You may yet wander in without offence, and the rather as you wander in them with fo pure a mind and to fo moral a purpose, there feems no decent pretence for me to loiter in them any longer.

Yet in faying this I would not be thought to affume that severe character; which, tho' fometimes the garb of reafon, is oftener, I believe, the mask of dullness, or of fomething worfe. No, I am too fenfible to the charms, nay to the uses of your profeffion, to affect a contempt for it. The great Roman faid well, Haec ftudia adolefcentiam alunt ; feneEtutem oblectant. We make a full meal of them in our youth. And no philofophy requires fo perfect a mortification as that we should wholly abftain from them in our riper years. But fhould we reverfe the obfervation; and take this light food not as the refreshment only, but as the proper nourishment of Age; fuch a name, as Cicero's, I am afraid, would be wanting, and not cafily found, to justify the practice.

Let