Many subjects fall under the consideration of an author, which, being limited by nature, can admit only of slight and accidental diversities. All definitions of the same thing must be nearly the same; and descriptions, which are definitions of a more lax and fanciful kind, must always have in some degree that resemblance to each other which they all have to their object. Different poets describing the spring or the sea would mention the zephyrs and the flowers, the billows and the rocks; reflecting on human life, they would, without any communication of opinions, lament the deceitfulness of hope, the fugacity of pleasure, the fragility of beauty, and the frequency of calamity; and for palliatives of these incurable miseries, they would concur in recommending kindness, temperance, caution, and fortitude. When therefore there are found in Virgil and Horace two similar passages: Hae tibi erunt artes Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos. To tame the proud, the fetter'd slave to free: Imperet bellante prior, jacentem Lenis in hostem. Let Cæsar spread his conquests far, VIRG. DRYDEN. HOR. it is surely not necessary to suppose with a late critick, that one is copied from the other, since neither Virgil bor Horace can be supposed ignorant of the common duties of humanity, and the virtue of moderation in success. Cicero and Ovid have on very different occasions VOL. VI, C remarked how little of the honour of a victory belongs to the general, when his soldiers and his fortune have made their deductions; yet why should Ovid be suspected to have owed to Tully an observation which perhaps occurs to every man that sees or hears of military glories? Tully observes of Achilles, that had not Homer written, his valour had been without praise. Nisi Ilias illa extitisset, idem tumulus qui corpus ejus con texerat, nomen ejus obruisset. Unless the Iliad had been published, his name had been lost in the tomb that covered his body. Horace tells us with more energy that there were brave men before the wars of Troy, but they were lost in oblivion for want of a poet : Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Nocte, carent quia vate sacro. Before great Agamemnon reign'd, In the small compass of a grave: In endless night they sleep, unwept, unknown: FRANCIS. Tully enquires, in the same oration, why, but for fame, we disturb a short life with so many fatigues? Quid est quod in hoc tam exiguo vitæ curriculo et tam brevi, tantis nos in laboribus exerceamus? Why in so small a circuit of life should we employ our selves in so many fatigues? Horace enquires in the same manner, Quid brevi fortes jaculamur ævo Why do we aim, with eager strife, FRANCIS. when our life is of so short duration, why we form such numerous designs? But Horace, as well as Tully, might discover that records are needful to preserve the memory of actions, and that no records were so durable as poems; either of them might find out that life is short, and that we consume it in unnecessary labour. There are other flowers of fiction so widely scattered and so easily cropped, that it is scarcely just to tax the use of them as an act by which any particular writer is despoiled of his garland; for they may be said to have been planted by the ancients in the open road of poetry for the accommodation of their successors, and to be the right of every one that has art to pluck them without injuring their colours or their fragrance. The passage of Orpheus to hell, with the recovery and second loss of Eurydice, have been described after Boetius by Pope, in such a manner as night justly leave him suspected of imitation, were not the images such as they might both have derived from more ancient writers. Quæ sontes agitant metu Ultrices scelerum deœ Jam mæsta lacrymis madent, Non Ixionium caput Velox præcipitat rota. The pow'rs of vengeance, while they hear, Ixion's rapid wheel is bound, Fix'd in attention to the sound. F. LEWIS. Thy stone, O Sysiphus, stands still, And the pale spectres dance! Tandem, vicimur, arbiter Donemus, comitem viro, Emtam carmine, conjugem. Subdu'd at length, Hell's pitying monarch cry'd, He sung, and hell consented Stern Proserpine relented, Heu, noctis prope terminos Nor yet the golden verge of day begun, F. LEWIS. At once beheld, and lost, and was undone. F. LEWIS. But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes; No writer can be fully convicted of imitation, except there is a concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have happened by chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined without any natural series or necessary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are copied. Thus it can scarcely be doubted, that in the first of the following passages Pope remembered Ovid, and that in the second he copied Crashaw : Sæpe pater dixit, studium quid inutile tentas? Sponte suâ carmen numeros veniebat ad aptos, OVID. Quit, quit this barren trade, my father cry'd; I left no calling for this idle trade; -This plain floor, Believe me, reader, can say more F. LEWIS. POPE. Here lies a truly honest man. CRASHAW. This modest stone, what few vain marbles can, POPE. Conceits, or thoughts not immediately impressed by sensible objects, or necessarily arising from the coalition or comparison of common sentiments, may be with great justice suspected whenever they are found a second time. Thus Waller probably owed to Grotius an elegant compliment: Here lies the learned Savil's heir, That none, except her years they told, Unica lux sæcli, genitoris gloria, nemo The age's miracle, his father's joy! WALLER. GROTIUS. Nor old you wou'd pronounce him, nor a boy. F. LEWIS. And Prior was indebted for a pretty illustration to Alleyne's poetical history of Henry the Seventh. |