inftance to pronounce of imitations. It is not enough, you pretend, to fay of any pafnote fage in a celebrated poet, that it most probably was taken from fome other. In your extreme jealoufy for the credit of your order, you call upon me to fhew the diftinct marks which convict him of this commerce.

In a word, You require me to turn to the poets; to gather a number of thofe paffages I call Imitations; and to point to the circumstances in each that prove them to be fo. I attend you with pleasure in this amufing fearch. It is not material, I fuppofe, that we obferve any ftrict method in our ramblings. And yet we will not wholly neglect it.

Perhaps then we fhall find undoubted marks of Imitation, both in the SENTIMENT, and EXPRESSION of great writers. To begin with fuch confiderations as are moft GENERAL.

1. An identity of the fubject-matter of poetry is no fure evidence of Imitation: and leaft of all, perhaps, in natural deVOL. III. fcription.

M

fcription. Yet where the local peculiarities of nature are to be defcribed, there an exact conformity of the matter will evince an imitation.

Defcriptive poets have ever been fond of lavishing all the riches of their fancy on the Spring. But the appearances of this prime of the year are so diverfified with the climate, that defcriptions of it, if taken directly from nature, muft needs be very different. The Greek and Latin, and, fince them, the Provencial poets, when they infift, as they always do, on the indulgent foftness of this feafon, its genial dews and foftering breezes, fpeak nothing but what is agreeable to their own experience and feeling.sday

It ver; et Venus; et Veneris praenuntius antè
Pinnatus graditur Zephyrus veftigia propter:
Flora quibus mater praefpergens antè viaï
Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.

(Venus, for the spirit of love, is repre fented by those poets as brooding o'er this

delicious feafon;

yasm dziw czzal ewened oldsimsap

Ipfa furgentis papillas de Favonî spiritu (Į
Urguet in toros tepentes; ipfa roris lucidi, etc.

and a great deal more to the fame purpose, which every one recollects in the old claffic and in the Provencial poets.

But when we hear this language from the more northern, and particularly our English bards, who perhaps are shivering with the blafts of the north-eaft, at the very time their imagination would warm itself with these notions, one is certain this cannot be the effect of obfervation, but of a fportful fancy; enchanted by the native loveliness of thefe exotic images, and charmed by the fecret infenfible power of imitation.

hada?

And to fhew the certainty of this conclufion, Shakespear, we may obferve, who had none of this claffical or Provencial bias on his mind, always defcribes, not a Greek, or Italian, or Provencial, but an English Spring; where we meet with many

unamiable characters; and, among the reft, instead of Zephyr or Favonius, we have - the bleak north-eaft, that nips the blooming infants of the Spring.

But there are other obvious examples. In Cranmer's prophetic speech, at the end of HENRY VIII, when the poet makes him fay of Queen Elizabeth, that,

"In her days ev'ry man fhall eat with fafety "Under his own vine what he plants."

and of King James, that,

"He fhall flourish,

"And, like a mountain Cedar, reach his "branches

"To all the plains about him”

It is easy to fee that his Vine and Cedar are not of English growth, but tranfplanted from Judæa. I do not mention this as an impropriety in the poet, who, for the greater folemnity of his prediction, and even from a principle of decorum, makes his Arch-bifhop fetch his imagery from Scripture. I only take notice of it as a certain argument that the imagery was not his own, that is, not fuggefted by his own obfervation of nature.

The

The cafe You fee, in these inftances, is the fame as if an English landskip-painter fhould choose to decorate his Scene with an Italian fky. The Connoiffeur would say, he had copied this particular from Titian, and not from Nature. I prefume then to give it for a certain note of Imitation, when the properties of one clime are given to another.

II. You will draw the fame conclufion whenever You find "The Genius of one “people given to another.”

1. Plautus gives us the following true picture of the Greek manners: -In hominum aetate multaeveniunt hujusmodiIrae interveniunt, redeunt rurfum in gratiam. Verùm irae fiquae fortè eveniunt hujusmodi, Inter eos rurfum fi reventum in gratiam eft, Bis tanto amici funt inter fe, quàm prius.

AMPHYT. A. III. S. 2.

You are better acquainted with the inodern Italian writers than I am; but if ever You find any of them transferring this placability of temper into an eulogy of his countrymen, conclude without heûtation, that the fentiment is taken.