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fame paffage: "Aliena negotia centum 66 per caput et centum faliunt latus. A hundred bufineffes of other men fly continually about his head and ears, and "ftrike him in the face like Dorres." Difc. of Liberty. And ftill more clearly from Mr. Pope's,

"A hundred other men's affairs,

"Like bees, are humming in my ears."

Learned writers of quick parts abound in these delicate allufions. It makes a principal part of modern elegancy to glance in this oblique manner at well-known paf• fages in the claffics.

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XV. I will trouble you with but one more note of imitated expreffion, and it shall be the very reverse of the laft. When the paffages glanced at are not familiar, the expreffion is frequently minute and circumftantial, correfponding to the original in the order, turn, and almoft number of the words. The reafons are, that, the imitated paffage not being known, the imitator may give it, as he finds it, with fafety, or at least without offence; and that, befides,

befides, the force and beauty of it would escape us in a brief and general allufion. The following are instances :

I.

"Man never is, but always to be bleft." Effay on Man, Ep. I. ver. 69.

from Manilius,

Victuros agimus femper, nec vivimus unquam,

2.

cr Hope never comes,

"That comes to all."

MILTON, P. L. 1. ver. 66.

from Euripdes in the Troad. ver. 676. —εδ ̓, ὃ πᾶσι λείπεται βροτοῖς,

Ξύνεσιν ἐλπὶς.

3. But above all, that in Jonfon's Ca

tiline,

"He fhall die:

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"Shall was too flowly faid: He's dying: That "Is ftill too flow: He's dead."

from Seneca's Hercules furens, A. III.

"Lycus Creonti debitas poenas dabit:"
"Lentum eft, dabit; dat: hoc quoque eft

"lentum; dedit."

You have now, Sir, before you a fpecimen of those rules, which I have fancied might be fairly applied to the discovery of imitations, both in regard to the SENSE and

2

EXPRESSION

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EXPRESSION of great writers. I would not pretend that the fame ftrefs is to be laid on all; but there may be fomething, at leaft, worth attending to in every one of them. It were eafy, perhaps, to enumerate ftill more, and to illuftrate these I have given with more agreeable citations. Yet I have spared you the difguft of confidering thofe vulgar paffages, which every body recollects and fets down for acknowledged imitations. And these I have used are taken from the most celebrated of the antient and modern writers. You may

obferve indeed that I have chiefly drawn from our own poets; which I did, not merely because I know you despise the pedantry of confining one's self to learned quotations, but becaufe I think we are better able to difcern thofe circumftances, which betray an imitation, in our own.. language than in any other. other. Amongst other reasons, an identity of words and phrafes, upon which fo much depends, especially in the article of expreffion, is only to be had in the fame language. And you are not to be told with how much more

certainty

certainty we determine of the degree of evidence, which fuch identity affords for this purpofe, in a language we fpeak, than in one which we only lifp or fpell.

But you will beft understand of what importance this affair of expreffon is to the difcovery of imitations, by confidering how feldom we are able to fix an imitation on Shakespeare. The reafon is, not that there are not numberless paffages in him very like to others in approved authors, or that he had not read enough to give us a fair hold of him'; but that his expreffion is fo totally his own, that he almoft always fets us at defiance.

You will ask me, perhaps, now I am on this fubject, how it happened that Shakefpeare's language is every where fo much his own as to fecure his imitations, if they were fuch, from difcovery, when I pronounce with fuch affurance of thofe of our other poets? The answer is given for me in the Preface to Mr. Theobald's Shakespeare; though the obfervation, I think, is too good to come from that critic. It is, that, though his words, agreeably to the

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ftate

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ftate of the English, tongue at that time, be generally Latin, his phrafeology is perfectly English: an advantage, he owed to his flender acquaintance with, the Latin idiom. Whereas the other writers of his age, and fuch others, of an older date as were likely to fall into his hands, had not only the most familiar acquaintance with the Latin idiom, but affected on all occa fions to make ufe of it. Hence it comes to pass, that, though he might draw fome times from the Latin (Ben Jonson, you know, tells us, He had lefs. Greek) and the learned, English writers, he takes nothing but the fentiment; the expreffion comes af itself, and is purely English.

I might indulge in other reflexions, and detain you ftill further with examples taken from his works. But we have lain, as the Poet fpeaks, on thefe primrose beds, too long. It is time that you now rife to your own nobler inventions; and that I return myself to thofe, lefs pleafing, perhaps, but more useful ftudies, from which your friendly follicitations have called me. Such as these amusements are, however,, I cannot.

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