conftructions of gracclefs zeal, was very naturally tempted to adopt this candid fentiment, and to give it the further heightening of his own fpirited expreffion.

Let us fee then how far we are got in this inquiry. We may fay of the old Latin poets, that they all came out of the Greek fchools. It is as true of the moderns in this part of the world, that they in general have had their breeding in both the Greek and Latin. But when the queftion is of any particular writer, how far and in what inftances you may presume on his being a profeffed imitator, much will depend on the certain knowledge you have of his Age, Education, and Character. When all thefe circumftances meet in one man, as they have done in others, but in none perhaps fo eminently as in B. Jonfon, wherever you find an acknowledged. likenefs, you will do him no injuftice to call it imitation.

Yet all this, you fay, comes very much fhort of what you require of me. You want me to specify thofe peculiar confiderations, and even to reduce them into rule, from which one may be authorized in any

inftance

inftance to pronounce of imitations. It is
not enough, you pretend, to say of any paf-
fage in a celebrated poet, that it most pro-
bably was taken from fome other. In
your extreme jealoufy for the credit of
your order, you call upon me to fhew the
diftinct marks which convict him of this
commerce.

In a word, you require me to turn to the poets; to gather a number of thofe paffages I call Imitations; and to point to the circumftances in each that prove them to be fo. I attend you with pleasure in this amusing fearch. It is not material, I fuppofe, that we obferve any ftrict method. in our ramblings. And yet we will not wholly neglect it.

Perhaps then we fhall find undoubted marks of Imitation both in the SENTIMENT and EXPRESSION of great writers.

To begin with fuch confiderations as are moft GENERAL.

I. An identity of the fubject-matter of poetry is no fure evidence of Imitation and leaft of all, perhaps, in natural deVol. III. fcription.

M

fcription. Yet where the local peculiarities of nature are to be defcribed, there an exact conformity of the matter will evince an imitation.

Descriptive poets have ever been fond of lavishing all the riches of their fancy on the Spring. But the appearances of this prime of the year are fo diverfified with the climate, that defcriptions of it, if taken directly from nature, muft needs be very different. The Greek and Latin, and, fince them, the Provencial poets, when they infift, as they always do, on the indulgent foftness of this feafon, its genial dews and foftering breezes, speak nothing but what is agreeable to their own experience and feeling.

It ver; et Venus; et Veneris praenuntius antè Pinnatus graditur Zephyrus veftigia propter: Flora quibus mater praefpergens antè viaï Cuneta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.

Venus, or the fpirit of love, is reprefented by those poets as brooding o'er this delicious feafon ;

Rura

Rura foecundat voluptas: rura VENEREM sentiunt.

Ipfa gemmas purpurantem pingit annum flori

bus:

Ipfa furgentis papillas de Favonî spiritu

U rguet in toros tepentes; ipfa roris lucidi, etc.

and a great deal more to the fame purpose, which every one recollects in the old claffic. and in the Provencial poets.

But when we hear this language from the more northern, and particularly our English bards, who perhaps are fhivering with the blafts of the north-eaft, at the very time their imagination would warm itself with these notions; one is certain this cannot be the effect of observation, but of a fportful fancy, enchanted by the native loveliness of these exotic images, and charmed by the fecret infenfible power of

imitation.

And to fhew the certainty of this conclufion, Shakespeare, we may observe, whọ had none of this claffical or Provencial bias on his mind, always defcribes, not a Greek, or Italian, or Provencial, but an English Spring; where we meet with many

M 2

unamiable

1

unamiable characters; and, among the reft, instead of Zephyr or Favonius, we have the bleak north-eaft, that nips the blooming infants of the Spring.

But there are other obvious examples. In Cranmer's prophetic fpeech, at the end of HENRY VIII, when the poet makes him fay of Queen Elizabeth, that,

"In her days ev'ry man fhall eat with fafety, “ Under his own vine, what he plants"— and of King James, that,

"He fhall flourish,

"And, like a mountain Cedar, reach his "branches

"To all the plains about him"

it is easy to fee that his Vine and Cedar are not of English growth, but tranfplanted from Judæa. I do not mention this as an impropriety in the poet, who, for the greater folemnity of his prediction, and even from a principle of decorum, makeş his archbishop fetch his imagery from Scripture. I only take notice of it as certain argument, that the imagery was not his own, that is, not fuggefted by his own obfervation of nature.

The