particular it is. For, as to the more common and obvious fentiments, even dramatic fpeakers will very frequently employ the fame, without affording any juft reafon to conclude that their prompters had turned plagiaries. VIII. If to this fingularity of a fentiment, you add the apparent harshness of it, especially when not gradually prepar'd (as fuch fentiments always will be by exact writers, when of their own proper invention) the suspicion grows ftill ftronger. I just glanc'd at an inftance of this fort in Milton's curl'd grove. But there are others ftill more remarkable. Shall I prefume for once to take an instance from yourself? Your fine Ode to Memory begins with these very lyrical verses: Mother of Wisdom! Thou whose sway Who bidft their ranks now vanish, now appear, This fublime imagery has a very original air. Yet I, who know how familiar the best antient and modern critics are to you, have no doubt that it is taken from STRADA. "Quid accommodatius, fays he, fpeaking of your fubject, Memory, quàm fimulachrorum ingentes copias, tanquàm addi&tam ubique tibi facramento militiam, eo inter fe nexu ac fide conjunctam cohærentemque habere; ut five unumquodque feparatim, five confertim univerfa, five fingula ordinatim in aciem proferre ve lis; lis; nihil planè in tantâ rerum turbâ turbetur, fed alia procul atque in receffu fita prodeuntibus locum cedant; alia, fe tota confeftim promant atque in medium certò evocata profiliant? Hoc tam magno, tam fido domefticorum agmine inftructus animus, &c." Prol. Acad. I. Common writers know little of the art of preparing their ideas, or believe the very name of an Ode abfolves them from the care of art. But, if this uncommon fentiment had been intirely your own, you, I imagine, would have dropp'd fome leading idea to introduce it. IX. You fee with what a fufpicious eye, we who afpire to the name of critics, examine your writings. But every poet will not endure to be fcrutiniz'd fo narrowly. 1. B. Johnson, in his Prologue to the Sad Shepherd, is opening the subject of that poem. The fadness of his shepherd is For his loft Love, who in the TRENT is faid To have mifcarried; 'las! what knows the head Of a calm river, whom the feet have drown'd! The reflexion in this place is unnecessary and even impertinent. Who befides ever heard of the feet of a river? Of arms, we have. And fo it ftood in Johnfon's original. Greatest and Fairest Emprefs, know you this, Alafs! no more than Thames' calm head doth know Whose meads his arms drown, or whofe corn o'erDr. DONNE. flow. The poet is fpeaking of the corruption of the courts of justice, and the allufion is perfectly fine and natural. Johnson was tempted to bring it into his prologue by the mere beauty of the fentiment. He had a river at his difpofal, and would not let flip the opportunity. But "his unnatural ufe of it detects his "imitation." 2. I don't know whether you have taken notice of a miscarriage, fomething like this, in the most judicious of all the poets. Theocritus make Polypheme fay, Και γὰρ τὴν ἐδ' ειδος ἔχω κακόν, ὥς με λέγοντι, Η γὰρ πρὸν ἐς Πόνον ἐσέβλεπον, ἦν δὲ γαλάνα. Nothing could be better fancied than to make this enormous fon of Neptune use the sea for his lookingglass. But is Virgil so happy when his little land-man fays, Nec fum adeo informis: nuper me in littore vidi, Cùm placidum ventis ftaret mare — His wonderful judgment for once deserted him, or he might have retain❜d the sentiment with a slight change in the application. For inftance, what if he had faid, Certè ego me novi, liquidæque in imagine vidi Nuper aquæ, placuitque mihi mea forma videnti. It is a fort of curiofity, you fay, to find Ovid reading a leffon to Virgil. I will diffemble nothing. The lines lines are, as I have cited them, in the 13th book of the metamorphofis. But unluckily they are put into the mouth of Polypheme. So that instead of instructing one poet by the other, I only propose that they should make an exchange; Ovid take Virgil's fea, and Virgil be contented with Ovid's water. However this be, you may be fure the authority of the Prince of the Latin poets will carry it with admiring posterity f above all fuch scruples of decorum. No body wonders therefore to read in Taffo, Non fon' io Da difprezzar, fe ben me fteffo vidi But of all the mifappliers of this fine original sentiment, commend me to that other Italian, who made his fhepherd furvey himself, in a fountain indeed, but a fountain of his own weeping. 3. You will forgive my adding one other inftance "of this vicious application of a fine thought. You remember thofe agreeable verfes of Sir John "Tempefts of winds thus (as my ftorms of grief I don't stay to examine how far the fancy of tears relieving the heart is allowable. But admitting the propriety of the obfervation, in the fense the poet intended it, the fimile is applied and expreffed with the utmost beauty. It accordingly ftruck the best writers of that time. SPRAT, in his hiftory of the Royal Society, is taking notice of the mifapplication of philosophy to subjects of Religion. "That shower, says "he, has done very much injury by falling on the "fea, for which the fhepherd, and the ploughman, call'd in vain: The wit of men has been profufely pour'd out on Religion, which needed not its help, "and which was only thereby made more tempeftu66 ous while it might have been more fruitfully spent, on fome parts of philofophy, which have been hitherto barren, and might foon have been made " fertil." p. 25. You see what wire-drawing here is to make the comparison, so proper in its original use, just and pertinent to a fubject to which it had naturally no relation. Befides, there is an abfurdity in fpeaking of a shower's doing injury to the fea by falling into it. But the thing illuftrated by this comparison requiring the idea of injury, he transfers the idea to the comparing thing. He would foften the abfurdity, by running the comparison into metaphorical expreffion, but, I think, it does not remove it. In fhort, for thefe reafons, one might eafily have inferr'd an Imitation, without that parenthesis to apologize for it To ufe that metaphor which an excellent poet of our nation turns to another purpose—” 66 - -- But |
