tiality for me, can you, in earnest, think me capable of fulfilling the first of these conditions; Or, if I were, do you imagine that, at this time o' day, I can have the leisure to perform the other? My younger years, indeed, have been spent in turning over those authors which young men are most fond of; and amongst these I will not difown that the Poets of antient and modern fame have had their full share in my affection. But You, who love me fo well, would not wish me to pass more of my life in these flowery regions; which tho' You may yet wander in without offence, and the rather as you wander in them with fo pure a mind and to fo moral a purpose, there feems no decent pretence for me to loiter in them any longer.

Yet in saying this I would not be thought to affume that severe character; which, tho' fometimes the garb of reafon, is oftener, I believe, the mask of dullness, or of something worse. No, I am too fenfible to the charms, nay to the uses of your profeffion, to affect a contempt for it. The great Roman faid well, Haec ftudia adolefcentiam alunt; feneEtutem oblectant. We make a full meal of them in our youth. And no philosophy requires fo perfect a mortification as that we fhould wholly abftain from them in our riper years. But should we reverse the obfervation; and take this light food not as the refreshment only, but as the proper nourishment of Age; fuch a name, as Cicero's, I am afraid, would be wanting, and not eafily found, to juftify the practice.

Let

1

Let us own then, on a greater authority than His, "That every thing is beautiful in it's feafon." The Spring hath it's buds and blossoms: But, as the year runs on, You are not difpleas'd, perhaps, to fee them fall off; And would certainly be disappointed not to find them, in due time, fucceeded by thofe mellow hangings, the poet somewhere speaks of.

I could alledge ftill graver reasons. But I would only fay, in one word, that your friend has had his fhare in these amufements. I may recollect with pleasure, but muft never live over again

Pieriofque dies, et amantes carmina fomnos.

Yet fomething, you infift, is to be done; and, if it amount to no more than a specimen or flight sketch, fuch as my memory, or the few notes I have by me, would furnish, the design, you think, is not totally to be relinquished.

I understand the danger of gratifying you on these terms. Yet, whatever it be, I have no power to excufe myself from any attempt, by which, you tell me at least, I may be able to gratify you. I will do my beft, then, to draw together fuch obfervations, as I have fometimes thought, in reading the poets, most material for the certain discovery of Imitations. And I address them to you, not only as You are the propereft judge of the fubject; You, who understand fo well in what manner the Poets are us❜d to imitate each other, and who yourself so finely imitate the beft of them; But as I would give You this small

proof of my affection, and have perhaps the ambition of publishing to the world in this way the entire friendship, that fubfifts between us.

You tell me I have fucceeded not amifs in explaining the difficulty of detecting Imitations. The materials of poetry, You own, lie so much in common amongst all writers, and the feveral ways of employing them are so much under the controul of common sense, that writings will in many respects be fimilar, where there is no thought or defign of Imitating. I take advantage of this conceffion to conclude from it, That we can feldom pronounce with certainty of Imitations without fome external proof to affift us in the difcovery. You will underftand me to mean by these external proofs, the previous knowledge we have, from confiderations not re fpecting the Nature of the work itself, of the writer's ability or inducements to imitate. Our firft enquiry, then, will be, concerning the Age, Character, and Education of the fuppos'd Imitator.

We can determine with little certainty, how far the principal Greek writers have been indebted to Imitation. We trace the waters of Helicon no higher than to their fource. And we acquiefce, with reason, in the device of the old painter, You know of, who somewhat rudely indeed, but not abfurdly, drew the figure of Homer with a fountain streaming out of his mouth, and the other poets watering at it.

Hither

Hither, as to their fountain, other Stars

Repairing, in their golden urns draw light. The Greek writers then were, or for any thing we can fay, might be Original.

But we can rarely affirm this of any other. And the reafon is plain. When a tafte for letters prevail'd in any country, if it arofe at firft from the efforts of original thinking, it was immediately cherish'd and cultivated by the ftudy of the old writers. You are too well acquainted with the progress of antient and modern wit to doubt of this fact. Rome adorn'd itself in the fpoils of Greece. And both affifted in dreffing up the later European poetry, What elfe do You find in the Italian or French Wits, but the old matter, work'd over again; only presented to us in a new form, and embellish'd perhaps with a conceit or two of mere modern inven. tion?

But the English, You fay, or rather your fondness for Your Masters leads You to suppose, are original thinkers. 'Tis true, Nature has taken a pleasure to shew us what she could do, by the production of ONE Prodigy. But the reft are what we admire them for, not indeed without Genius, perhaps with a larger fhare of it than has fallen to the lot of others, yet directly and chiefly by the difcipline of art and the helps of Imitation.

There is however a diftinction to be made. When the fathers of the English poefy appear'd, antient literature was not fufficiently known, and at another

period it was not sufficiently confider'd, to produce a strict and studied Imitation. But the first of these Poets, tho' You refpect them for their age and for their real merits, are not your favourites. And the other you despise for writing fo ill in their own way, when the models, they had in their hands, would have taught them to excell in a better.

To come then to the golden times of our two Queens, when the Muses, they fay, went to court, and, which fome may account the greater wonder, were not debauch'd there. Indeed the poetry of these Reigns is the noblest we have to boast of. Invention was at it's height in the one; and Correctnefs in the other. In both, the manners of a court refin'd, without either breaking or corrupting the fpirit of our Poets. But do you forget that ELIZABETH read Greek and Latin almost as easily as our Profeffors? And can you doubt that what the knew fo well, would be known, admired, and imitated by every other? or fay, that the writers of her time were, fome of them, ignorant enough of the learned languages to be inventors; can you fuppofe, from what you know of the fafhion of that age, that their fancies would not be sprinkled, and their wits refreshed by the effences of the Italian poetry?

I scarcely need fay a word of our other Queen, whofe reign was unquestionably the æra of claffic imitation and of claffic tafte. Even they, who had never been as far as Greece or Italy, to warm their imaginations or stock their memories, might do both to a tolerable degree in France; which tho' it bow'd to

our