ploy this well-worn image, or rather to alter it a little and then employ it, for the conveyance of a very new fancy. If the mind could look thro' a thin body, much more one that was crack'd and batter'd. And if it be for looking thro' at all, he will have it look to good purpose, and find, not it's frailty only, but much other useful knowledge.

The lines are Mr. Waller's, and in the best manner of that very refined writer.

Stronger by weakness, wifer, men become
As they draw near to their eternal home.
The Soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
Lets in new light thro' chinks that time has made.

2. After all, these conceits, I doubt, are not much to your taste. The inftance I am going to give, will afford you more pleasure. Is there a paffage in Milton You read with more admiration, than this in the Penferofo?

Entice the dewy-feather'd fleep;

And let fome strange myfterious dream
Wave at his wings in airy ftream;

Of lively portraiture display'd

Softly on my eye-lids laid.

Would You think it poffible now that the groundwork of this fine imagery should be laid in a passage of Ben Johnson? Yet fo we read, or feem to read in his Vifion of Delight.

Break, Phant'fy, from thy cave of cloud,
And spread thy purple wings:
Create of airy forms a ftream,
And tho' it be a waking dream,
Yet let it like an odour rife
To all the fenfes here

And fall like fleep upon their eyes

Or mufick in their ear.

It is a delicate matter to analyze fuch paffages as thefe; which, how exquifite foever in the poetry, when estimated by the fine phrenzy of a Genius, hardly look like sense when given in plain profe. But if You give me leave to take them in pieces, I will do it, at least, with reverence. We find then, that Fancy is here employ'd in one of her niceft operations, the production of a day-dream; which both poets represent as an airy form, or forms streaming in the air, gently falling on the eye-lids of her entranc'd votary. So far their imagery agrees. But now comes the mark of imitation I would point out to you. Milton carries the idea ftill farther, and improves finely upon it, in the conception as well as expreffion. Johnfon evokes fancy out of her cave of cloud, those cells of the mind, as it were, in which during her intervals of reft, and when unemploy'd, fancy, lies hid; and bids her, like a Magician, create this ftream of forms. All this is just and truly poetical. But Milton goes further. He employs the dewy-feather'd fleep as his Minifter in this machinery. And the

myfte

myfterious day-dream is seen waving at his wings in airy ftream. Johnson would have Fancy immediately produce this Dream. Milton more poetically, because in more diftinct and particular imagery, reprefents Fancy as doing her work by means of fleep; that foft compofure of the mind abftracted from outward objects, in which it yields to these phantaftic impreffions.

You fee then a wonderful improvement in this addition to the original thought. And the notion of dreams waving at the wings of fleep is, by the way, further juftified by what Virgil feigns of their sticking or rather fluttering on the leaves of his magic tree in the infernal regions. But it is curious to obferve how this improvement itself arofe from hints suggested by his original. From Johnfon's dream, falling, like fleep upon their eyes, Milton took his feather'd fleep, which he imperfonates so properly; And from Phant'fy's fpreading her purple wings, a circumftance, not fo immediately connected with Johnson's defign of creating of airy forms a ftream, he catched the idea of Sleep Spreading her wings, and to good purpose, fince the airy ftream of forms was to wave at them.

However, Johnson's image, is, in itself incomparable. It is taken from a winged infect breaking out of it's Aurelia ftate, it's cave of cloud, as it is finely called: Not unlike that of Mr. Pope,

So fpins the Silk-worm fmall it's flender ftore,
And labours till it clouds itself all o'er.

And nothing can be juster than this allufion. For the antients always pictured FANCY and HUMANLOVE with Infect's wings.

XIV. Thus then, whether the poet prevaricates, enlarges, or adds, ftill we frequently find fome latent circumstance, attending his management, that convicts him of Imitation. Nay, he is not fafe even when he denies himself these liberties; I mean when he only glances at his original." For, in this cafe, "the borrowed fentiment ufually wants fomething of "that perfpicuity which always attends the first delivery of it." This Rule may be confidered as the Reverse of the laft. A writer, fometimes takes a pleafure to refine on a plain thought: Sometimes (and that is ufually when the original fentiment is well known and fully develloped) he does not so much as attempt to open and explain it.

A poet of the last age has the following lines, on the fubject of Religion.

Religion now is a young Mistress here,

For which each man will fight, and dye at leaft;
Let it alone awhile, and 'twill become

A kind of married wife; people will be
Content to live with it in quietnefs.

SUCKLING fays this in his Tragedy of Brennoralt; which is a Satir throughout on the rifing troubles of that time. BUTLER has taken the thought and applied it on the fame occafion.

When

When hard words, jealoufies, and fears
Set folks together by the ears,

And made them fight, like mad or drunk,

For dame Religion, as for Punk.

Setting afide the difference between the burlesque and serious ftyle, one eafily fees that this fentiment is borrowed from Suckling. It has not the clear and full expofition of an original thought. Butler, only represents men as drunk with Religion and fighting for it as for a Punk. The other gives the reafon of the Debauch, namely, fondness for a new face; and tells us, befides, how things would fubfide into peace or indifference on a nearer and more familiar acquaintańce. One could expect no lefs from the Inventor of this humorous thought; a Borrower might be content to allude to it.

XV. This laft confideration puts me in mind of another artifice to conceal a borrowed fentiment. Nothing lies more open to discovery than a Simile in form, especially if it be a remarkable one. These are a fort of purpurei panni which catch all eyes; and, if the comparison be not a writer's own, he is almost fure to be detected. The way then that refined Imitators take to conceal themselves, in fuch a cafe, is to run the Similitude into Allegory. We have a curious instance in Mr. Pope, who has fucceeded fo well in the attempt, that his plagiarism, I believe, has never been fufpected.