"As to the courfe of Nature, if a good man be paffing by an infirm building, just in the article of falling, can it be expected that God fhould fufpend the force of gravitation till he is gone by, in order to his deliverance; or can we think it would be increased, and the fall haftened, if a bad man was there, only that he might be caught, crushed, and made an example? If a man's fafety or profperity fhould depend upon winds or rains, muft new motions be impreffed upon the atmosphere, and new directions given to the floating parts of it, by fome extraordinary and new influence from God?" III. Sometimes the original expreffion is not taken but paraphrafed; and the writer disguises himself in a kind of circumlocution. Yet this artifice does not conceal him, efpecially if fome fragments, as it were, of the inventor's phrafe are found difperfedly in the imitation. For in the fecret of her troubled thought Hence Mr. Waller, VOL. III. There There public care and private paffion fought Poems, p. 14 Public care is the periphrafis of bonour; and private paffion, of love. For the rest you fee-disjecti membra poeta. IV. An, imitation is difcoverable,, when, there is but the leaft particle, of the origi nal expreffion," by a peculiar and no very natural arrangement of words," In Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, the speaker says, The writer glanced, but very improperly on fuch an occafion, at Exod. xxxiii. 200 "Thou canst not fee my face: for there "fhall no man fee me, and live." V. An uncommon construction of words, not identical, especially if the fubject be the fame, fame, or the ideas fimilar, will look like The Swan with arched neck Between her white wings mantling proudly ROWS HER STATE 10 I fhould think he might probably have that line of Fletcher in his head, How like a Swati fhe' SWIMS HER PACE! The expreffion, you fee, is very like! It is true, the image in Milton is much nobler. It is taken from a barge of state in a public proceffion. VI. We may even pronounce that a fingle word is taken, when it is new and un common. Y Milton's calling a ray of light-a levell'd rule, in Comus ver. 340, is fo particular that, when one reads in Euripides, ηλία ΚΑΝΩΝ caps, Suppl. ver. 650,one has no doubt that the learned poet tranflated the Greek word. Q 2 Again, Again, Mr. Pope's, " Or ravish'd with the whistling of a name," is for the fame reason, if there were no other points of likeness, copied from Mr. Cowley's "Charm'd with the foolish whistlings of a name." Tranfl. of Virgil's, O! fortunati nimium, &c. VII. An improper ufe of uncommon expreffion, in very exact writers, will fometimes create a fufpicion. Milton had called the fight indifferently vifual nerve and visual ray, P. L. iii. 620. xi. 415. Mr. Pope, in his Meffiah, thought he might take the fame liberty, but forgot that though the visual nerve might be purged from film, the visual ray could not. Had Mr. Pope invented this bøld expreffion, he would have seen to apply his metaphor more properly. VIII. Where the word or phrafe is foreign, there is, if poffible, ftill lefs doubt. at laft his fail-broad vans He fpreads for flight. Milton, P. L. ii. 927. 1 Moft certainly from Taffo's, -Spiega al grand volo i vanni. ix. And that of Jonson, in his Sejanus, Oh! what is it proud flime will not believe from Juvenal's -nihil eft quod credere de fe A. I. Non poffit, cum laudatur Diis æqua poteftas. IX. Conclude the fame when the expreffion is antique, in the writer's own language. In Mr. Waller's Panegyric on the Protector, So, when a Lion fhakes his dreadful mane, The antique formality of the phrase, that first took pain, for, that first took the pains, in fo pure and modern a fpeaker as this poet, looks fufpicious. He took it as he Q 3 found |