I conceive to be unequivocal. If they are fo, they will generally appear at first sight; fo that I fhall have little occafion to trouble you, as I did before, with my comments. It will be fufficient to deliver the rule, and so exemplify it. I. An identity of expreffion, especially if carried on through an intire sentence, is the most certain proof of imitation. Mr. Waller of Sachariffa, So little care of what is done below op di Like glorious colours thro' the flow'ry meads Mr. Fenton takes notice that the poet copying from the Muiopotmos of Spenser, To the gay gardens his unftaid defire Pours forth fweet odours and alluring fights. is We fhall fee presently that, befides the iden tity of expreffion, there is alfo another mark of imitation in this paffage, II. But lefs than this will do, where the fimilarity of thought, and application of it, is striking, Mr. Pope fays divinely well, Shall burning Ætna, if a fage requires, Or fome old temple nodding to its fall Now turn to Mr. Wollaston, an eafy natural writer (where his natural manner is not stiffened by a mathematical pedantṛy) and abounding in fine fallies of the imagination; and fee if the poet did not catch his expreffion, as well as the fire of his conception in this place, from the philofopher: "As As to the courfe of Nature, if a good man be paffing by an infirm building, juft in the article of falling, can it be expected that God fhould fufpend the force of gravi tation till he is gone by, in order to his deli verance; or can we think it would be increased, and the fall haftened, if a bad man was there, only that he might be caught, crushed, and made an example? If a man's fafety or profperity fhould depend upon winds or rains, muft new motions be impreffed upon the atmosphere, and new directions. given to the floating parts of it, by fome extraordinary and new influence from God?" III. Sometimes the original expreffion is not taken but paraphrased; and the writer difguifes himself in a kind of circumlocution. Yet this artifice does not conceal him, efpecially if fome fragments, as it were, of the inventor's phrafe are found difperfedly in the imitation. For in the fecret of her troubled thought Hence Mr. Waller, VOL. III. There ; There public care and private paffion fought t A doubtful combat in his noble thought. dis Poems, p. 14. Public care is the periphrafis of honour, and *private paffion, of love. For the reft you fee-disjecti membra poetæ. IV. An imitation is discoverable, when there is but the least particle of the original expreffion, "by a peculiar and no very natural arrangement of words." In Fletcher's faithful Shepherdess, the The writer glanc'd, but very improperly on fuch an occafion, at Exod. xxxiii. 20. "Thou canst not fee my face: for there fhall no man fee me, and live." co nodw V. An uncommon conftruction of of words not identical, especially if the fubject be the fame, fame, or the ideas fimilar, will look like imitation. Milton fays finely of the Swan, The Swan with arched neck Between her white wings mantling proudly ROWS HER STATE I fhould think he might probably have that line of Fletcher in his head, How like a Swan fhe SWIMS HER PACE! The expreffion, you fee, is very like. 'Tis true, the image in Milton is much nobler. It is taken from a barge of ftate in a public proceffion. VI. We may even pronounce that a fingle word is taken, when it is new and un common. Weal Milton's calling a ray of light-a levell❜d rule in Comus 340, is fo particular that, when one reads in Euripides, ήλία ΚΑΝΩΝ caps, Suppl. 650, one has no doubt that the learned poet tranflated the Greek word. Q 2 Again, |