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I understand the danger of gratifying you on these terms. Yet, whatever it be, I have no power to excufe myself from any attempt, by which, you tell me at leaft, I may be able to gratify you. I will do my beft then to draw together fuch obfervations, as I have fometimes thought, in reading the poets, moft material for the certain difcovery of Imitations. And I addrefs them to you, not only as You are the propereft judge of the fubject; You, who understand fo well in what manner the Poets are used to imitate each other, and who yourself fo finely imitate the best of them; but as I would give You this small proof of my affection, and have perhaps the ambition of publishing to the world in this way the entire friendship that fubfifts between us.

You tell me I have fucceeded not amifs in explaining the difficulty of detecting Imitations. The materials of poetry, You own, lie fo much in common amongst all writers, and the feveral ways of employing them are fo much under the controul of common fenfe, that writings will in many respects be fimilar, where there is no thought or defign of Imitating. I take advantage of this conceffion,

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ceffion, to conclude from it, That we can feldom pronounce with certainty of Imitations without fome external proof to affift us in the discovery. You will understand me to mean, by these external proofs, the previous knowledge we have, from confiderations not refpecting the nature of the work itself, of the writer's ability or inducements to imitate. Our first enquiry then will be, concerning the Age, Character, and Education, of the fuppofed Imitator.

We can determine with little certainty, how far the principal Greek writers have been indebted to Imitation. We trace the waters of Helicon no higher than to their fource. And we acquiefce, with reafon, in the device of the old painter, You know of, who fomewhat rudely indeed, but not abfurdly, drew the figure of Homer with a fountain ftreaming out of his mouth, and the other poets watering at it.

Hither, as to their fountain, other Stars
Repairing, in their golden urns draw light.

The Greek writers then were, or, for any thing we can fay, might be, Original.

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But we can rarely affirm this of any other. And the reafon is plain. When a tafte for letters prevailed in any country, if it arofe at firft from the efforts of original thinking, it was immediately cherished and cultivated by the ftudy of the old writers. You are too well ace quainted with the progrefs of antient and modern wit, to doubt of this fact. Rome adorned itself in the fpoils of Greece. And both affifted in dreffing up the later Eu ropean poetry. What elfe do You find in the Italian or French Wits, but the old matter, worked over again; only prefented to us in a new form, and embellished perhaps with a conceit or two of mere modern invention?

But the English, You fay, or rather your fondness for Your Mafters leads You to fuppose, are original thinkers. It is true, Nature has taken a pleasure to fhew as what the could do, by the production of ONE Prodigy. But the reft are what we admire them for, not indeed without Genius, perhaps with a larger fhare of it than has fallen to the lot of others, yet directly and chiefly by the dif cipline of art and the helps of imitation.

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* The golden times of the English Poetry were, undoubtedly, the reigns of our two Queens. Invention was at its height in the one, and Correctnefs in the other. In both, the manners of a court refined, without either breaking or corrupting, the fpirit of our poets. But do you forget that ELIZABETHS read Greek and Latin almoft as eafily as our Profeffors? and can you doubt that what fhe knew fo well would be known, admired, and imitated, by every other? Or fay, that the writers of her time were, fome of them, ignorant enough of the learned languages to be inventors; can you fuppofe, from what you know of the fashion of that age, that their fancies would not be sprinkled, and their wits refrefhed, by the effences of the Italian poetry?

I fcarcely need fay a word of our OTHER› Queen, whofe reign was unquestionably the æra of claffic imitation and of claffic tafte. Even they, who had never been as far as Greece or Italy to warm their imaginations: or ftock their memories, might do both to a tolerable degree in France; which, though it bowed to our country's arms, had almost the afcendant in point of letters."

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I mention these things only to put you in mind that hardly one of our poets has been in a condition to do without, or certainly be above, the fufpicion of learned imitation. And the observation is so true, that even in this our age, when good letters, they fay, are departing from us, the Greek or Roman stamp is ftill visible in every work of genius that has taken with the publick. Do you think one needed to be told in the titlepage, that a late DRAMA, or fome later ODES were formed on the antient model?

The drift of all this, you will fay, is to overturn the former difcourfe; for that now I pretend every degree of likeness to a preceding writer is an argument of imita tion. Rather, if you pleafe, conclude that, in my opinion, every degree of likeness is exposed to the fufpicion of imitation. To convert this suspicion into a proof, it is not enough to fay, that a writer might, but that his circumstances make it plain, or probable at least, that he did imitate.

Of these circumstances then, the first I fhould think deferving our attention, is the AGE in which the writer, lived. One should know if it were an age addicted to much study,

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