NUMB. 143. TUESDAY, July 30, 1751. Moveat cornicula rifum Left when the birds their various colours claim A HOR. FRANCIS. MONG the innumerable practices by which intereft or envy have taught those who live upon literary fame to difturb each other at their airy banquets, one of the moft common is the charge of plagiarism. When the excellence of a new compofition can no longer be contefted, and malice is compelled to give way to the unanimity of applaufe, there is yet this one expedient to be tried, by which the author may be degraded, though his work be reverenced; and the excellence which we cannot obfcure, may be fet at fuch a distance as not to overpower our fainter luftre. This accufation is dangerous, because, even when it is false, it may be fometimes urged with probability. Bruyere declares, that we are come into the world too late to produce any thing new, that nature and life are preoccupied, and that description and fentiment have been long exhaufted. It is indeed certain, that whoever attempts any common topick, will find unexpected coincidences of his thoughts with those of other writers; nor can the niceft judgment always diftinguish accidental fimilitude from 3 artful artful imitation. There is likewife a common stock of images, a fettled mode of arrangement, and a beaten track of transition, which all authors fuppofe themselves at liberty to use, and which produce the resemblance generally observable among cotemporaries. So that in books which beft deserve the name of originals, there is little new beyond the difpofition of materials already provided; the fame ideas and combinations of ideas have been long in the poffeffion of other hands; and by restoring to every man his own, as the Romans must have returned to their cots from the poffeffion of the world, fo the most inventive and fertile genius would reduce his folios to a few pages. Yet the author who imitates his predeceffors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and elegancies out of the fame general magazine of literature, can with little more propriety be reproached as a plagiary, than the architect can be cenfured as a mean copier of Angelo or Wren, because he digs his marble from the fame quarry, fquares his ftones by the fame art, and unites them in columns of the fame orders. Many fubjects fall under the confideration of an author, which being limited by nature can admit only of flight and accidental diverfities. All definitions of the fame thing must be nearly the same; and defcriptions, which are definitions of a more lax and fanciful kind, must always have in fome degree that refemblance to each other which they all have to their object. Different poets defcribing the spring or the fea would mention the zephyrs and the flowers, the billows and the rocks; reflect-ing on human life, they would, without any communication munication of opinions, lament the deceitfulness of hope, the fugacity of pleasure, the fragility of beauty, and the frequency of calamity; and for palliatives of these incurable miferies, they would concur in recommending kindness, temperance, caution, and fortitude. When therefore there are found in Virgil and Horace two fimilar paffages, Parcere fubjectis, et debellare fuperbos.- To tame the proud, the fetter'd slave to free: Imperet bellante prior, jacentem Let Cæfar spread his conquefts far, VIRG. DRYDEN. HOR. it is furely not neceffary to fuppofe with a late critick that one is copied from the other, fince neither Virgil nor Horace can be fuppofed ignorant of the common duties of humanity, and the virtue of moderation in fuccefs. Cicero and Ovid have on very different occafions remarked how little of the honour of a victory belongs to the general, when his foldiers and his fortune have made their deductions; yet why fhould Ovid be fufpected to have owed to Tully an obfervation which perhaps occurs to every man that fees or hears of military glories? Tully obferves of Achilles, that had not Homer written, his valour had been without praise. Nifi Nifi Ilias illa extitiffet, idem tumulus qui corpus ejus contexerat, nomen ejus obruiffet. Unless the Iliad had been published, his name had been loft in the tomb that covered his body. Horace tells us with more energy that there were brave men before the wars of Troy, but they were loft in oblivion for want of a poet. Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Note, carent quia vate facro. Before great Agamemnon reign'd, Reign'd kings as great as he, and brave, In endless night they fleep, unwept, unknown: FRANCIS. Tully enquires, in the fame oration, why, but for. fame, we disturb a fhort life with so many fatigues? Quid eft quod in hoc tam exiguo vitæ curriculo et tam brevi, tantis nos in laboribus exerceamus? Why in so small a circuit of life fhould we employ ourselves in fo many fatigues? Horace enquires in the fame manner, Quid brevi fortes jaculamur ævo Multa? Why do we aim, with eager ftrife, FRANCIS. when our life is of fo fhort duration, why we form fuch numerous defigns? But Horace, as well as VOL. VI. C Tully, Tully, might difcover that records are needful to preserve the memory of actions, and that no records were fo durable as poems; either of them might find out that life is fhort, and that we confume it in unneceffary labour. There are other flowers of fiction fo widely fcattered and so easily cropped, that it is scarcely just to tax the use of them as an act by which any particular writer is defpoiled of his garland; for they may be faid to have been planted by the ancients in the open road of poetry for the accommodation of their fucceffors, and to be the right of every one that has art to pluck them without injuring their colours or their fragrance. The paffage of Orpheus to hell, with the recovery and fecond lofs of Eurydice, have been defcribed after Boetius by Pope, in fuch a manner as might juftly leave him fufpected of imitation, were not the images fuch as they might both have derived from more ancient writers. |