derns delight fo much in dialogue-writing, and yet that fo very few have fucceeded in it. The proper answer to the first part of your enquiry will go fome way towards giving you fatisfaction as to the last. The practice is not original, has no foundation in the manners of modern times. It arofe from the excellence of the Greek and Roman dialogues, which was the ufual form in which the antients chose to deliver their fentiments on any fubject.

Still another inftance comes in my way. How happen'd it, one may ask, that SIR PHILIP SYDNEY in his Arcadia, and afterwards SPENSER in his Fairy Queen, obferv'd fo unnatural a conduct in those works; in which the Story proceeds, as it were, by snatches, and with continual interruptions? How was the good fenfe of those writers, fo converfant befides in the best models of antiquity, feduc'd into this prepofterous method? The answer, no doubt, is, that they were copying the defign, or diforder rather, of ARIOSTO, the favourite poet of that time.

III. Of near akin to this contrariety to the genius of a people is another mark which a careful reader will obferve" in the reprefentation of certain TE"NETS, different from those which prevail in a wri"ter's country or time."

1. We seldom are able to fasten an imitation, with certainty, on fuch a writer as Shakespear. Sometimes we are, but never to fo much advantage as when he happens to forget himself in this refpect. When Clau

dio, in Measure for Measure, pleads for his life in that famous speech,

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ;
To lye in cold obftruction, and to rot;
This fenfible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted fpirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to refide
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed Ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with reftlefs violence about
The pendant world

It is plain that these are not the Sentiments which any man entertain'd of Death in the writer's age or in that of the speaker. We fee in this paffage a mixture of Chriftian and Pagan ideas; all of them very fufceptible of poetical ornament, and conducive to the argument of the Scene; but fuch as Shakespear had never dreamt of but for Virgil's Platonic hell; where, as we read,

aliæ panduntur inanes

Sufpenfæ ad ventos: aliis fub gurgite vasto,
Infectum eluitur fcelus, aut exuritur igni.

Virg. L. vi.

2. A prodigiously fine paffage in Milton may nish another example of this fort.

When Luft

By unchaft looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,

fur

But

But most by lewd and lavish act of Sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The foul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp,
Oft feen in charnel vaults and fepulchres,
Ling'ring, and fitting by a new made grave,
As loth to leave the body, that it lov'd,
And linkt itself by carnal fenfuality
To a degenerate and degraded state.

Mafk at Ludlow Caftle.

This philofophy of imbruted fouls becoming thick shadows is fo remote from any ideas entertain'd at prefent of the effects of Sin, and at the fame time is fo agreeable to the notions of Plato (a double favourite of Milton, for his own fake, and for the fake of his being a favourite with his Italian Masters) that there is not the least question of it's being taken from the PHAEDO.

Ἡ τοιάυτη ψυχὴ βαρύνεται τε καὶ ἕλκεται πάλιν εις τὸν ὁραῖὸν τόπον, φόβῳ τὸ ἀειδές τε καὶ ὧδε, περὶ τὰ μνήματα καὶ τοὺς τάφος κυλινδεμένη· περὶ ἃ δὴ καὶ ὤφε θη ἄλλα ψυχῶν σκιοειδή φαντάσματα, οἷα παρέχον Ται αι τοιαύται ψυχαί ἔἴδωλα, αι μὴ καθαρῶς ἀπολυθεῖσαι

There is no wonder, now one fees the fountain Milton drew from, that, in admiration of this poetical philofophy (which nourish'd the fine fpirits of that time, tho' it corrupted fome) he fhould make the

other speaker in the Scene cry out, as in a fit of extafy,

How charming is divine philofophy!

Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools fuppofe,

But mufical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns

The very ideas which Lord SHAFTESBURY has employed in his encomiums on the Platonic philofophy; and the very language which Dr. HENRY MORE would have us'd if he had known to exprefs himfelf fo foberly.

3. Having faid fo much of Plato; whom the Italian writers have help'd to make known to us, let me just observe one thing, to our present purpose, of those Italian writers themfelves. One of their peculiarities, and almost the first that ftrikes us, is a certain fublime myftical air which runs thro' all their fictions. We find them a fort of philofophical fanatics, indulging themselves in ftrange conceits "con"cerning the Soul, the chyming of celestial orbs, and 66 prefiding Syrens." One may tell by these marks, that they doted on the fancies of Plato; if we had not, befides, direct evidence for this conclufion. Taffo fays of himself, and he applauds the fame thing in Petrarch, "Leffi già tutte l'opere di Platone, è mi "rimaffero molti femi nella mente della fua dottri"na." I take thefe words from Menage, who has

much

much more to the fame purpose, in his elegant obfervations on the Amintas of this poet.

One fees then where Milton had been for that imagery in the ARCADES.

then liften I

To the celestial Syrens harmony,

That fit upon the nine enfolded spheres

And fing to those that hold the vital shears,
And turn the adamantine spindle round,

- On which the fate of Gods and men is wound.

The best comment on these verses is a paffage in the xth Book of Plato's Republic, where this whole fyftem, of Syrens quiring to the fates, is explained or rather deliver'd.

IV. We have feen a Mark of Imitation, in the allufion of writers to certain ftrange, and foreign tenets of philosophy. The obfervation may be extended to all those passages (which are innumerable in our poets) that allude to the rites, customs, language and theology of Paganism.

It is true indeed this Species of Imitation is not that which is, properly, the subject of this Letter. The moft original writer is allowed to furnish himfelf with poetical ideas from all quarters. And the management of learned Allufion is to be regarded, perhaps, as one of the niceft offices of Invention. Yet it may be useful to fee from what fources a great poet derives his materials; and the rather, as this detection will sometimes account for the manner