The natural mifanthropy of Swift may account for his thinking and fpeaking very often in the fpirit of ROCHFOUCAULT, without any thought of taking from his Maxims, though he was an admirer of them. But if at any time we obferve so humane and benevolent a man as Mr. Pope giving into this language, we say of course, “This " is not his own, but an affumed manner."

Or what fay you to an inftance that exemplifies both these obfervations together? The natural unaffected turn of Mr. Cowley's manner, and the tender fenfibility of his mind, are equally feen, and loved in his profe works, and in fuch of his as poems were written after a good model, or came from the heart. A clear fparkling fancy, foftened with a fhade of melancholy, made him perhaps of all our poets the most capable of excelling in the elegiac way, or of touching us in any way where a vein of eafy language and moral fentiment is required. Who but laments then to fee this fine genius perverted by the prevailing pedantry of his age, and carried away, against

the

the bias of his nature, to an emulation of the rapturous, high-fpirited Pindar?

I might give many more examples. But you will obferve them in your own reading. I take the first that come to hand, only to explain my meaning, which is, "That if you find a courfe of fentiments, or caft of compofition, different from that to which the writer's fituation, genius, or complexion, would naturally lead him, you may well fufpect him of imitation."

Still, it may be, these confiderations are rather too general. I come to others more particular and decifive.

VI. It may be difficult fometimes to determine whether a fingle fentiment or image be derived or not. But when we see a cluster of them in two writers, applied to the fame subject, one can hardly doubt that one of them has copied from the other.

A celebrated French moralift makes the following reflexions: "Quelle chimere eft"ce donc que l'homme? Quelle nouveauté,

quel chaos, quel fujet de contradiction? "Juge de toutes chofes, imbecile ver de N 3 66 terre;

"terre; depofitaire du vrai, amas d'incerti"tude; gloire, et rebut de l'univers."

Turn now to the Effay on Man, and tell me if Mr. Pope did not work up the following lines out of these reflexions:

"Chaos of thought and paffion, all confus'd; "Still by himself abus'd or difabus'd; "Created half to rife, and half to fall, "Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all; "Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd; "The glory, jeft, and riddle of the world."

2. This conclufion is ftill more certain, when, together with a general likeness of fentiments, we find the fame difpofition of the parts, especially if that difpofition be in no common form.

"Sweet is the breath of morn, her rifing sweet "With charm of earliest birds: pleasant the fun, "When firft on this delightful land he fpreads "His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flow'r, "Glift'ring with dew"

and the reft of that fine speech in the IVth Book of Paradife loft, which you remember

fo

fo perfectly that I need not transcribe more of it.

Milton's fancy, as ufual, is rich and exuberant; but the conduct and application of his imagery fhews, that the whole paffage was fhadowed out of thofe charming but fimpler lines in the DANAE of Euripides :

— φίλον μὲν φέγια ηλία, τόδε,
Καλὸν δὲ πότε χεῦμ' ἰδεῖν ἐυήνεμον,
Γῆ τ' ἠρινὸν θάλλεσα, πλέσιον θ ̓ ὕδωρ,
Πολλῶν τ ̓ ἔπαινόν ἐςί μοι λέξαι καλῶν.
Ἀλλ ̓ ἐδὲν ἔτω λαμπρὸν, εδ' ἰδεῖν, καλὸν,
Ὡς τοῖς ἅπαισι, καὶ πόθῳ δεδηγμένοις,
Παίδων νεογνῶν ἐν δόμοις ἰδεῖν φάος.

VII. There is little doubt in such cases as thefe. There needs not perhaps be much in the cafe, fometimes, of fingle fentiments or images. As where we find "a * fentiment or image in two writers pre"cifely the fame, yet new and unusual."

I. Thus we are told very reafonably, that Milton's cluftring locks is the copy of Apollonius" ΠΛΟΚΑΜΟΙ ΒΟΤΡΥΟΕΝΤΕΣ. Obs.

ΝΑ

Obf. on Spencer, p. 80. For though the metaphor be a just one and very natural, yet there is perhaps no other authority for the use of it, but in these two poets. And Milton had certainly read Apollonius.

2. What the fame critic obferves of Milton's,

"In ringlets quaint”

And curl the grove

being taken from Jonfon's,

"When was old Sherwood's head more quaintly " curl'd?"

is ftill more unquestionable. For here is a combination of figns to convict the former of imitation: not only the fingularity of the image, but the identity of expreffion, and, what I lay the most stress upon, the boldness of the figure, as employed by Milton. Jonfon speaks of old Sherwood's bead, as curl'd. Milton, as confcious of his authority, drops the preparatory idea, and fays at once, The grove curl'd.

Let me add to thefe, two more inftances

from the fame poet.

3. Spenfer