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Ipfa furgentis papillas de Favonî spiritu

Urguet in toros tepentes; ipfa roris lucidi, &c.

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

And to fhew the certainty of this conclufion, Shakefpear, 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 rest, instead of Zephyr or Favonius, we have the bleak north-east, 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 shall eat with safety "Under his own vine what he plants.

and of K. James, that

"He fhall flourish

“And,

"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 transplanted 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 decofum, makes his Arch-bishóp 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 cafe You see, in these instances, is the fame as if an English landskip-painter should choose to decorate his Scene with an Italian sky. The Connoiffeur would fay, 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 an* other."

1. Plautus gives us the following true picture of the Greek manners.

In hominum ætate multa eveniunt hujusmodiIræ interveniunt, redeunt rurfum in gratiam. Verùm iræ fiquæ fortè eveniunt hujusmodi, Inter eos rurfum fi reventum in gratiam eft, Bis tanto amici funt inter fe, quàm prius.

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You are better acquainted with the modern 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 hesitation, that

the sentiment is taken.

2. The late Editor of Johnson's works obferves very well the impropriety of leaving a trait of Italian manners in his Ev'ry man in his humour, when he fitted up that Play with English characters. Had the scene been laid originally in England, and that trait been given us, it had convicted the poet of Imitation.

3. This attention to the genius of a people will fometimes fhew You, that the form of compofition, as well as particular fentiments, comes from Imitation. An inftance occurs to me as I am writing. The Greeks, You know, were great haranguers. So were the antient Romans, but in a lefs degree. One is not surpriz'd therefore that their hiftorians abound in fet fpeeches; which, in their hands, become the finest parts of their works. But when You find modern writers indulging in this practice of speech-making, You may guess from what source the habit is deriv'd. Would Machiavel, for inftance, as little of a Scholar as, they fay, he was, have adorn'd his fine hiftory of Florence with fo many harangues, if the claffical bias, imperceptibly, it may be, to himself, had not hung on his mind?

Another example is remarkable. You have fometimes wonder'd how it has come to pass that the mo

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derns delight fo much in dialogue-writing, and yet that so very few have fucceeded in it. The proper answer to the first part of your enquiry will go fome way towards giving you fatisfaction as to the last. The practice is not original, has no foundation in the manners of modern times. It arose from the excellence of the Greek and Roman dialogues, which was the ufual form in which the antients chose to deliver their fentiments on any subject.

Still another inftance comes in my way. How happen'd it, one may afk, that SIR PHILIP SYDNEY in his Arcadia, and afterwards SPENSER in his Fairy Queen, obferv'd fo unnatural a conduct in those works; in which the Story proceeds, as it were, by fnatches, and with continual interruptions? How was the good fenfe of those writers, fo converfant befides in the best models of antiquity, feduc'd into this prepofterous method? The answer, no doubt, is, that they were copying the defign, or diforder rather, of ARIOSTO, the favourite poet of that time.

III. Of near akin to this contrariety to the genius of a people is another mark which a careful reader will obferve" in the representation of certain TENETS, different from those which prevail in a wri"ter's country or time."

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1. We feldom are able to faften an imitation, with certainty, on fuch a writer as Shakespear. Sometimes we are, but never to so much advantage as when he happens to forget himself in this refpect. When Clau

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L

dio, in Measure for Measure, pleads for his life in
that famous speech,

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lye in cold obftruction, and to rot;
This fenfible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to refide
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed Ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence about
The pendant world

It is plain that these are not the Sentiments which any
man entertain'd of Death in the writer's age or in
that of the speaker. We fee in this paffage a mixture
of Chriftian and Pagan ideas; all of them very fuf-
ceptible of poetical ornament, and conducive to the
argument of the Scene; but fuch as Shakespear had
never dreamt of but for Virgil's Platonic hell; where,
as we read,

aliæ panduntur inanes

Sufpenfæ ad ventos: aliis fub gurgite vafto,
Infectum eluitur fcelus, aut exuritur igni.

Virg. L. vi.

2. A prodigiously fine paffage in Milton may furnish another example of this fort.

14

When Luft

By unchaft looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,

But

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