XI. In the examples, just given, there was no reafon to fufpect the poet was imitating, till you met. with the original. Then indeed the rhyme leads to the discovery. But if an exact writer falls into a flatness of expreffion for the fake of rhyme, you may ev'n previously conclude that he has fome precedent for it."

In the famous lines

Let modest Fofter, if he will, excell
Ten metropolitans in preaching well.
Ep. to Satires,

131.

I used to fufpect that the phrase of preaching well fo unlike the concise accuracy of Pope, would not have been hazarded by him, if some eminent writer, tho' perhaps of an older age and lefs correct taste than his own, had not fet the example. But I had no doubt left when I happened on the following couplet in Mr. Waller.

Your's founds aloud, and tells us you excell
No lefs in courage, than in finging well.

Poem to Sir W. D'Avenant.

Our great poet is more happy in the application of thefe rhymes on another occafion,

Let fuch teach others, who themselves excell,

And cenfure freely, who have written well.

The reafon is apparent. But here he glanced at the Duke of Buckingham's,

"Nature's chief mafter-piece is writing well.

XII. "The fame paufe and turn of expreffion are pretty fure fymptoms of imitation." Thefe minute refemblances do not ufually fpring from Nature, which, when the fentiment is the fame, hath a hundred ways of its own, of giving it to us,

1. That noble verfe in the effay on criticism, 625.

For fools rufh in, where angels dare not tread,

is certainly fashion'd upon Shakespear's,

"the world is grown so bad

"That wrens make prey, where eagles dare not Rich. III. A. 1. S. III.

perch.

2. The verfes to Sir W. Trumbal in Paft. r.

"And carrying with you all the world can boast, To all the world illuftriously are loft."

from Waller's Maid's Tragedy alter'd,

Happy is he that from the world retires

And carries with him what the world admires.

p.215. Lond. 1712.

XIII. When to thefe marks the fame Rhyme is

added, the cafe is ftill more evident.

"Men

"Men would be angels, angels would be Gods.”

Effay on Man, Ep.1. 126.

Without all question from Sir Fulk Grevil,

Men would be tyrants, tyrants would be Gods.

Works, Lond. 1633. P.73.

XIV. The feeming quaintness and obfcurity of an expreffion frequently indicates imitation. As when in Fletcher's Pilgrim we read,

"Hummings of higher nature vex his brains.

A. 11. S. 2.

Had the idea been original, the poet had expressed it more plainly. In leaving it thus, he pays his reader the complement to fuppofe, that he will readily call to mind,

aliena negotia centum

Per caput, et circa faliunt latus.

which fufficiently explains it: As we may fee from Mr. Cowley's application of the fame paffage. "Aliena negotia centum per caput et circa faliunt latus. A hundred bufineffes of other men fly continually about his head and ears, and strike 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 paffages in the claffics.

XV. I will trouble you with but one more note of imitated expreffion, and it fhall be the very reverfe 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 leaft without offence; and that, befides, the force and beauty of it would escape us in a brief and general allufion. The following are inftances.

1. "Man never is, but always to be bleft. Effay on man, Ep. 1.69.

from Euripides in the Troad. . 676.

ἐδ', ὃ πᾶσι λέιπεται βροτοῖς,

Ξύνεσιν ἐλπὶς. —

3. But

3. But above 1, that in Johnfon's Cataline

--

He fhall die:

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

From Seneca's Hercules furens, A. 111.

Lycus Creonti debitas pœnas 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 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 easy, perhaps, to enumerate still more, and to illuftrate these I have given with more agreeable citations. Yet I have spared you the disgust of confidering those vulgar pasfages, which every body recollects and fets down for acknowledged imitations. And these I have used are taken from the most celebrated of the ancient 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 felf to learned quotations, but because I think we are better able to difcern thofe circumftances, which betray an imitation, in our own language than in any other. Amongst other reasons, an identity of words and phrafes, upon which so much

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