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Yet this must be understood with some limitations.

For 1. There are in every language fome current and authorized forms of speech, which can hardly be avoided by a writer without affectation. They are fuch as exprefs the most obvious fentiments, and which the ordinary occafions of life are perpetually obtruding on us. Now thefe, as by common agreement, we chufe to deliver to one another in the fame form of words. Convenience dictates this to one set of writers, and politeness renders it facred in another. Thus it will be true of certain phrafes (as, univerfally, of the words, in any language), that they are left in common to all writers; and can be claimed as matter of property, by none. Not that fuch phraseology will be frequent in nobler compofitions, as the familiarity of its ufage takes from their natural referve and dignity. Yet on certain occafions, which justify this negligence, or in certain authors, who are not over follicitous about thefe indecorums, we may expect to meet with it. Hamlet fays of his father,

He

He was a man, take him for all in all ";
I fhall not look upon his like again.

which may be suspected of being ftolen
from Sophocles, who has the following paf-
fage in the TRACHINIAE:

Πάνων ἄριςον ἄνδρα τῶν ἐπὶ χθονί

Κτείνασ', ΟΠΟΙΟΝ ΑΛΛΟΝ ΟΥΚ ΟΨΕΙ ΠΟΤΕ.

ver. 824.

The fentiment being one of the commoneft, that' offers itself to the mind, the fole ground of fufpicion muft lie in the expreffion, "I shall not look upon bis like "again," to which the Greek fo exactly answers. But these were the ordinary expreffions of fuch sentiment, in the two languages; and neither the characters of the great poets, nor the fituation of the speakers, would fuffer the affectation of departing from common ufage.

What is here faid of the fituation of the Speakers reminds me of another class of expreffions, which will often be fimilar in all poets. Nature, under the fame conjunctures, gives birth to the fame conceptions; and

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and if they be of fuch a kind, as to exclude all thought of artifice, and the tricks of eloquence (as on occafions of deep anxiety. and diftrefs), they run, of themselves, into the fame form of expreffion. The wretched Priam, in his lamentation of Hector, lets drop the following words:

* μ' ἄχθ ̓ ὀξὺ καλοίσεται αΐδος εἴσω.

"This line, fays his tranflator, is particu

૮૯ "larly tender, and almoft word for word "the fame with that of the Patriarch Jacob; "who, upon a like occafion, breaks out in "the fame complaint, and tells his children, "that, if they deprive him of his fon Ben"jamin, they will bring down his grey hairs "with forrow to the grave."

We may further except, under this head, certain privileged forms of speech, which the peculiar idioms of different languages make neceffary in them, and which poetry confecrates in all. But this is easily obferved, and its effect is not very confi-. derable.

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2. In

2. In pleading this identity of expression, regard must be had to the language from which the theft is fuppofed to be made. If from the fame language (fetting afide the exceptions juft mentioned), the fame arrangement of the fame words is admitted as a certain argument of plagiarism: nay, less than this will do in fome inftances, as where the imitated expreffion is pretty fingular, or fo remarkable, on any account, as to be well known, &c. But, if from another language, the matter is not fo eafy. It can rarely happen, indeed, but by defign, that there fhould be the fame order or compofition of words in two languages. But that which paffes even for literal tranflation is but a fimilar compofition of correfponding words. And what does this imply, but that the writers conceived of their object in the same manner; and had occafion to fet it in the fame light? an occafion, which is perpetually recurring to all authors; as may be gathered from that frequent and ftrong refemblance in the expreffion of moral fentiments, obfervable in the writers of every age and country. Can there be a comVOL. III. I

moner

moner reflexion, or which more constantly occurs to the mind under the fame appearance, than that of our great poet, who, fpeaking of the state after death, calls it

That undifcovered country, from whofe bourn
No traveller returns!

Shall we call this a tranflation of the Latin poet;

Nunc it per iter tenebricofum

Illuc, unde negant redire quenquam!

CATUL. III. 11.

Or, doth it amount to any more than this, that the terms employed by the two writers in expreffing the fame obvious thought are correfpondent? But correspondency and iden tity are different things. The latter is only where the words are numerically the fame, which can only happen in one and the fame language: the other is effected by different fets of words, which are numerous in every language, and are therefore no convincing proof (abftractedly from other circumftances) of imitation.

From these general reflexions on language, without refining too far, or prying

too

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