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

1

But You will best understand of what importance this affair of expreffion is to the difcovery of imitations, by confidering how feldom we are able to fix an imitation on Shakespear. The reafon is, not, that there are not numberlefs 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 almost always fets us at defiance.

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

r

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 occafions to make ufe of it. Hence it comes to pafs, that, though he might draw fometimes from the Latin (Ben. Johnson, you know, tells us, He had lefs Greek) and the learned English writers, he takes nothing but the fentiment; the expreffion comes of itfelf, 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 those, lefs pleafing, perhaps, but more useful ftudies from which your friendly follicitations have called me. Such as these amusements are, however, I cannot

repent

t

repent me of them, fince they have been innocent at leaft, and even ingenuous; and, what I am fondeft to recollect, have helped to enliven thofe many years of friendship we have paffed together in this place. I fee indeed, with regret, the approach of that time, which threatens to take me both from it, and you. But, however fortune may difpofe of me, she cannot throw me to a distance, to which your affection and good wishes, at least, will not follow me.

And for the rest,

"Be no unpleafing melancholy mine."

The coming years of my life will not, I forefee, in many respects, be what the past have been to me. But, till they take me from myself, I must always bear about me the agreeable remembrance of our friend

Your most affectionate

Friend and Servant.

IN D E X

TO THE

THREE VOLUME S.

A

A.

RT and NATURE, their provinces in forming a poet, vol. i. p. 271.

AGLAOPHON, his rude manner of painting; why preferred to Parrhafius and Zeuxis, ii. 58.

ANTIENTS, immoderately extolled, why, Ibid. ATELLANE, fable, a fpecies of Comedy, i. 182. different from the fatyric piece, 186. the Ofcan language ufed in it, 189. why criticized by Horace, 197. in what sense Pomponius, the Inventor of it, 188.

AENEIS, prefigured under the idea of a temple, ii. 44. the destruction of Troy, an episode, why, i. 122.

ATHENAEUS, of the moralizing turn of the Greeks, i. 176.

ALLEGORY, the diftinguished pride of antient

VOL. HI.

poetry, ii. 55. a fine inftance from Virgil,

44.

ADDISON, Mr. his judgment of the double sense

of verbs, ii. 73.

too poetical, ib.

his Cato, defended, 74. not

it's real defects, i. 80. his criticism on Milton proceeds on just principles, ii. III. how far defective, 114. ARISTOTLE, his opinion of Homer's imitations, i. 41. of Euripides, 97. of the business of the chorus, 129. of the fententious manner, 175. his fine Ode, corrected, 177. n. tranflated, 179. of the origin of tragedy, 185. a passage in his poetics explained, 104. his cenfure of the Iphigenia at Aulis, confidered, 113. he was little known at Rome in Cicero's time, 181. why Horace differs from him in his account of Aeschylus's inventions, 236. à fuppofed contradiction between him and Horace reconciled, 261. his judgment of moral picii. 91. his admiration of an epithet in Homer, on what founded, iii. 18.

tures,

ANTIGONE, the chorus of it defended, i. 144. APOLLONIUS Rhodius, why cenfured by Ariftophanes and Ariftarchus, i. 266.

APOTHEOSIS, the ufual mode of flattery in the Auguftan age, ii. 43.

APHORISMS, condemned in the Roman writers, i. 180. why used fo frequently by the Greeks,

ib.

3

AUCTOR,