source, and to remark, with what* judgment and art it is adapted and inserted; provided this be done with such a spirit of modesty and candour, as evidently shews, the critic intends merely to gratify curiosity, and not to indulge envy, malignity, and a petulant desire of dethroning established reputations. Thus, for instance, says the Rambler, "It can scarcely be doubted, that in the first of the following passages, POPE remembered OVID; and that in the second, he copied CRASHAW; because there is a concurrence of more resemblances than can be imagined to have happened by chance. Sæpe pater dixit, studium quid inutile tentas? Sponte suâ carmen numeros veniebat ad aptos, OVID. -I left * Dryden says prettily of Ben Jonson's many imitations of the ancients, "You track him every where in their sNow." + See the fruitless and impudent attack of Lauder on Milton. The Works of Cardinal Bembo, and of Casa, of Annibal Caro, and Tasso himself, are full of entire lines taken from Dante and Petrarch. 1 I left no calling for this idle trade, While yet a child, e'er yet a fool to fame, I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came. POPE. This plain floor, Believe me, reader, can say more Than many a braver marble can, CRASHAW, This modest stone, what few vain marbles can, May truly say, POPE.* Two other critics have also remarked some farther remarkable coincidences of POPE's thought and expressions, with those of other writers, which are here inserted, as they cannot fail of entertaining the curious. Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose, L'ignorance, et l' erreur a ses naissantes pieces,† POPE. Superior beings, when of late they saw Simia cœlicolum risusque jocusque deorum est, POPE. PALINGENIUS. Passer du grave au doux, du plaisant au severe. BOILEAU. The conclusion of the epitaph on Gay, where he observes, that his honour consists not in being entombed among kings and heroes, But that the worthy and the good may say, is adopted from an old Latin elegy on the death of Prince Henry. This conceit of his friend's being enshrined in the hearts of the virtuous, is, by by the way, one of the most forced, and farfetched, that POPE has fallen into.* Jonson, as another critic has remarked, wrote an Elegy on the Lady Anne Pawlet, Marchioness of Winton; the beginning of which POPE seems to have thought of, when he wrote his Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. begins his elegy, What gentle ghost, besprent with April dew, And beckoning woes me Jonson In which strain POPE beautifully breaks out, What beck'ning ghost along the moonlight shade, As Jonson now lies before me, I be pardoned for pointing out another may, perhaps, passage in him, * See the Adventurer, No. 63, where other borrowed passages are pointed out, particularly from Pascal, Charron, and Wollaston. In the underwood. him, which POPE probably remembered when he wrote the following: From shelves to shelves, see greedy Vulcan roll, Thus Jonson, speaking of a parcel of books, These, hadst thou pleas'd either to dine or sup, I should be sensibly touched at the injurious imputation of so ungenerous, and, indeed, impotent a design, as that of attempting to diminish or sully the reputation of so valuable a writer as POPE, by the most distant hint, or accusation of his being a plagiary; a writer to whom the English poesy, and the English language, is everlastingly indebted. But we may say of his imitations, what his poetical father, Dryden, said of another, who deserved not such a panegyric so justly as our author: "HE INVADES AU THORS LIKE A MONARCH; AND WHAT WOULD BE * Dunciad. See OBSERVATIONS on the FAERIE QUEENE of SPENSER, by Thomas Warton, sect. vii. p. 166. |