vulgar apprehension these analogies lie, so much the fitter for his purpose, which is not so much to illustrate his ideas, as to place them in new and uncommon lights, and entertain the mind by that odd fantastic conjunction, or opposition of ideas, which we know by the name of wit. Nay, the lowest, as well as the least obvious imagery will be, oftentimes, the most proper; his view being not to ennoble and raise his subject by the means of allusion, but to sink and debase it by every art, that hath a tendency to excite the mirth and provoke the ridicule of the reader. Here then we may expect a much more original air, than in the higher designs of invention. When all nature is before the poet, and the genius of his work allows him to seize her, as the shepherd did Proteus, in every dirty form, into which she can possibly twist herself, it were, indeed, a wonder, if he should chance to coincide, in his imagery, with any other, from whom he had not expressly copied. They who are conversant in works of wit and humour, more especially of these later times, will know this to be the case, in fact. There is not perhaps a single comparison in the inimitable TELEMAQUE, which had not, before, been employed by some or other of the poets. Can any thing, like this,

be said of RABELAIS, BUTLER, MARVEL, SWIFT, &c.?

SION.

III. It only remains to consider the EXPRESAnd in this are to be found the surest and least equivocal marks of imitation. We may regard it in two lights; either 1. as it respects the general turn or manner of writing, which we call a style; or 2. the peculiarities of phrase and diction.

1. A style in writing, if not formed in express imitation of some certain model, is the pure result of the disposition of the mind, and takes its character from the predominant quality of the writer. Thus a short and compact, and a diffused and flowing expression are the proper consequences of certain corresponding characters of the human genius. One has a vigorous comprehensive conception, and therefore collects his sense into few words. Another, whose imagination is more languid, contemplates his objects leisurely, and so displays their beauties in a greater compass of words, and with more circumstance and parade of Fanguage. A polite and elegant humour delights in the grace of ease and perspicuity. A severe and melancholic spirit inspires a forcible but involved expression. There are many

other nicer differences and peculiarities of manner, which, though not reducible, perhaps, to general heads, the critic of true taste easily understands.

2. As men of different tempers and dispositions assume a different cast of expression, so may the same observation be applied, still more generally, to different countries and times. It may be difficult to explain the efficient causes of this diversity, which I have no concern with at present. The fact is, that the eloquence of the eastern world has, at all times, been of another strain from that of the western. And, also, in the several provinces of each, there has been some peculiar note of variation. The Asiatic, of old, had its proper stamp, which distinguished it from the Attic; just as the Italian, French, and Spanish wits have, each, their several characteristic manners of expression.

A different state of times has produced the like effect; which a late writer accounts for, not unaptly, from what he calls a progression of life and manners. That which cannot be disputed is, that the modes of writing undergo a perpetual change or variation in every country. And it is further observable, that these

changes in one country, under similar circumstances, have a signal correspondence to those, which the incessant rotation of taste brings about in every other.

Of near affinity to this last consideration is another arising from the corresponding genius of two people, however remote from each other in time and place. And, as it happens, the application may be made directly to ourselves in a very important instance. "Languages,

says one, always take their character from "the genius of a people. So that two the "most distant states, thinking and acting with "the same generous love of mankind, must "needs have very near the same combinations "of ideas. And it is our boast that in this "conformity we approach the nearest to an"cient Greece and Italy." I quote these words from a tracts, which the author perhaps may consider with the same neglect, as Cicero did his earlier compositions on Rhetoric; but which the curious will regard with reverence, as a fine essay of his genius, and a prelude to the great things he was afterwards seen capable of producing. But to come to the use we may

A Critical and Philosophical Inquiry into the causes of prodigies and miracles, &c. p. 130.

make of this fine observation. The corresponding state of the English and Roman people has produced very near the same combinations of ideas. May we not carry the conclusion still further on the same principle, that it produced very near the same combinations of words? The fact is, as the same writer observes, That "we have a language "that is brief, comprehensive, nervous, and

majestic." The very character which an old Roman would give us of his own language. And when the same general character of language prevails, is it any thing strange that the different modifications of it, or peculiar styles, arising from the various turns and dispositions of writers (which, too, in such circumstances will be corresponding) should therefore be very› similar in the productions of the two states? Or, in other words, can we wonder that some of our best writers bear a nearer resemblance, I mean independently of direct imitation, to the Latin classics, than those of any other people in modern times?

But let it suffice to leave these remarks without further comment or explanation.

The use the discerning reader will make of them is, that if different writers agree in