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 Hæ 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 nor 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 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 contexerat, 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 endless night they sleep, unwept, unknown: Tully inquires, 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 ourselves in so many fatigues? Horace inquires in the same manner, Quid brevi fortes jaculamur ævo Multa? 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 7 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 might 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 dea Jam mæsta lacrymis madent, Non Ixionium caput Velox præcipitat rota. The pow'rs of vengeance, while they hear, Touch'd with compassion, drop a tear : Ixion's rapid wheel is bound, Fix'd in attention to the sound. Thy stone, O Sysiphus, stands still, Ixion rests upon his wheel, And the pale spectres dance! The furies sink upon their iron beds. F. LEWIS. Tandem, vincimur, arbiter Umbrarum, miserans, ait Donemus, comitem viro, Emtam carmine, conjugem. Subdu'd at length, Hell's pitying monarch cry'd, The song rewarding, let us yield the bride. He sung, and hell consented To hear the poet's prayer; Stern Proserpine relented, Heu, noctis prope terminos Orpheus Eurydicen suam Vidit, perdidit, occidit. Nor yet the golden verge of day begun, When Orpheus, her unhappy lord, Eurydice to life restor❜d, F. LEWIS. At once beheld, and lost, and was undone. F. LEWIS. 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? OVID. Quit, quit this barren trade, my father cry'd; I left no calling for this idle trade; --This plain floor, F. LEWIS. POPE. Believe me, reader, can say more Than many a braver marble can, 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, So early wise, and lasting fair, That none, except her years they told, Unica lux sacli, genitoris gloria, nemo The age's miracle, his father's joy! WALLER. GROT. pronounce him, nor a boy. F. LEWIS. And Prior was indebted for a pretty illustration to Alleyne's poetical history of Henry the Seventh. |