CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE. POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES. 'Tantus amor florum, et generandi gloria mellis.' 'Such rage of honey in our bosom beats, DRYDEN. THIS article was commenced by me many years ago in the early volumes of the Monthly Magazine, and continued by various correspondents, with various success. I have collected only those of my own contribution, because I do not feel authorised to make use of those of other persons, however some may be desirable. One of the most elegant of literary recreations is that of tracing poetical or prose imitations and similarities; for assuredly, similarity is not always imitation. Bishop Hurd's pleasing essay on The Marks of Imitation' will assist the critic in deciding on what may only be an accidental similarity, rather than a studied imitation. Those critics have indulged an intemperate abuse in these entertaining researches, who from a single word derive the imitation of an entire passage. Wakefield, in his edition of Gray, is very liable to this censure. 2 VOL. III. This kind of literary amusement is not despicable; there are few men of letters who have not been in the habit of marking parallel passages, or tracing imitation, in the thousand shapes it assumes; it forms, it cultivates, it delights taste to observe by what dexterity and variation genius conceals, or modifies, an original thought or image, and to view the same sentiment, or expression, borrowed with art, or heightened by embellishment. The ingenious writer of ‘A Criticism on Gray's Elegy, in continuation of Dr Johnson's,' has given some observations on this subject, which will please. It is often entertaining to trace imitation. To detect the adopted image; the copied design; the transferred sentiment; the appropriated phrase; and even the acquired manner and frame, under all the disguises that imitation, combination, and accommodation may have thrown around them, must require both parts and diligence; but it will bring with it no ordinary gratification. A book professedly on the History and Progress of Imitation in Poetry,' written by a man of perspicuity, and an adept in the art of discerning likenesses, even when minute, with examples properly selected, and gradations duly marked, would make an impartial accession to the store of human literature, and furnish rational curiosity with a high regale.' Let me premise that these notices (the wrecks of a large collection of passages I had once formed merely as exercises to form my taste) are not given with the petty malignant delight of detecting the unacknowledged imitations of our best writers, but merely to habituate the young student to an instructive amusement, and to exhibit that beautiful variety which the same image is capable of exhibiting when re-touched with all the art of genius. Gray in his Ode to Spring' has The attic warbler POURS HER THROAT.' Wakefield in his Commentary' has a copious passage on this poetical diction. He conceives it to be 'an admirable improvement of the Greek and Roman classics :' xav avday: Hes. Scut. Her. 396. Funde.' LUCRET. 1, 40. This learned editor was little conversant with modern literature, notwithstanding his memorable editions of Gray and Pope. The expression is evidently borrowed not from Hesiod, nor from Lucretius, but from a brother at home. 'Is it for thee, the Linnet POURS HER THROAT? Gray in the Ode to Adversity' addresses the power thus, 'Thou Tamer of the human breast, Whose IRON SCOURGE and TORTURING HOUR Wakefield censures the expression torturing hour,' by discovering an impropriety and incongruity. He says, 'consistency of figure rather required some material image, like iron scourge and adamantine chain.' It is curious to observe a verbal critic lecture such a poet as Gray! The poet probably would never have replied, or, in a moment of excessive urbanity, he might have condescended to point out to this minutest of critics the following passage in Milton, When the SCOURGE Inexorably, and the TORTURING HOUR Calls us to Penance.' Par. Lost, B. II, v, 90. Gray in his Ode to Adversity' has, 'Light THEY DISPERSE, and with them go, Fond of this image, he has it again in his Bard,' 'The SWARM, that in thy NOONTIDE BEAM are born, Gone!' Perhaps the germ of this beautiful image may be found in Shakspeare, 'for men, like BUTTERFLIES, Show not their mealy wings but to THE SUMMER.' Troilus and Cressida, A. III, s. 7. and two similar passages in Timon of Athens. 'The swallow follows not summer more willingly than we your lordship. Timon. Nor more willingly leaves winter; such summer birds are men.' Act III. Again in the same, one cloud of winter showers These flies are couch'd.' Act II. Gray in his Progress of Poetry' has, In climes beyond the SOLAR ROAD.' Wakefield has traced this imitation to Dryden; Gray himself refers to Virgil and Petrarch. Wakefield gives the line from Dryden, thus, 'Beyond the year, and out of heaven's high-way;' which he calls extremely bold and poetical. I confess a critic might be allowed to be somewhat fastidious on this unpoetical diction on the highway, which I believe Dryden never used. I think his line was thus, 'Beyond the year out of the SOLAR WALK.' Pope has expressed the image more elegantly, though copied from Dryden, 'Far as the SOLAR WALK, or milky way.' Gray has in his 'Bard' 'Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.' Gray himself points out the imitation in Shakspeare, of the latter image; but it is curious to observe that Otway, in his Venice Preserved,' makes Priuli most pathetically exclaim to his daughter, that she is 'Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life, Gray tells us that the image of his 'Bard' 'Loose his beard and hoary hair, Streamed like a METEOR to the troubled air,' was taken from a picture of the Supreme Being by Raphael. It is, however, remarkable, and somewhat ludicrous, that the beard of Hudibras is also compared to a meteor; and the accompanying observation in Butler almost induces one to think that Gray derived from it the whole plan of that sublime Ode — since his Bard precisely performs what the beard of Hudibras denounced. These are the verses: meet. 6 This HAIRY METEOR did denounce The fall of sceptres and of crowns.' Hud. C. 1. I have been asked if I am serious in my conjecture that the meteor beard' of Hudibras might have given birth to the Bard' of Gray. I reply that the burlesque and the sublime are extremes, and extremes How often does it merely depend on our own state of mind, and on our own taste, to consider the sublime as burlesque. A very vulgar, but acute genius, Thomas Paine, whom we may suppose destitute of all delicacy and refinement, has conveyed to us a notion of the sublime, as it is probably experienced by ordinary and uncultivated minds, and even by acute and judicious ones, who are destitute of imagination. He tells us that the sublime and the ridicu lous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime 2* VOL. III. |