was not his own, that is, not suggested by his own observation of nature. The case you see, in these instances, is the same as if an English landskip-painter should choose to decorate his Scene with an Italian sky. The Connoisseur would say, he had copied this particular from Titian, and not from Nature. I presume then to give it for a certain note of Imitation, when the properties of one clime are given to another. II. You will draw the same conclusion whenever you find "The Genius of one people given to another." 1. Plautus gives us the following true picture of the Greek manners: -In hominum aetate multa eveniunt hujusmodi Irae interveniunt, redeunt rursum in gratiam. Verùm irae siquae fortè eveniunt hujusmodi, Inter eos rursum si reventum in gratiam est, Bis tanto amici sunt inter se, quàm prius. AMPHYT. A. III. S. 2. You are better acquainted with the modern Italian writers than I am; but if ever you find any of them transferring this placability of temper into an eulogy of his countrymen, conclude without hesitation, that the sentiment is taken. 2. The late Editor of Jonson's works observes very well the impropriety of leaving a trait of Italian manners in his Every man in his humour, when he fitted up that Play with English characters. Had the scene been laid originally in England, and that trait been given us, it had convicted the poet of Imitation. 3. This attention to the genius of a people will sometimes shew you, that the form of composition, as well as particular sentiments, comes from Imitation. An instance occurs to me as I am writing. The Greeks, you know, were great haranguers. So were the ancient Romans, but in a less degree. One is not surprized therefore that their historians abound in set speeches; which, in their hands, become the finest parts of their works. But when you find modern writers indulging in this practice of speech-making, you may guess from what source the habit is derived. Would Machiavel, for instance, as little of a Scholar as, they say, he was, have adorned his fine be, history of Florence with so many harangues, if the classical bias, imperceptibly, it may to himself, had not hung on his mind? Another example is remarkable. You have sometimes wondered how it has come to pass that the moderns delight so much in dialoguewriting, and yet that so very few have succeeded in it. The proper answer to the first part of your enquiry will go some way towards giving you satisfaction as to the last. The practice is not original, has no foundation in the manners of modern times. It arose from the excellence of the Greek and Roman dialogues, which was the usual form in which the ancients chose to deliver their sentiments on any subject. Still another instance comes in my way. How happened it, one may ask, that Sir PHILIP SYDNEY in his Arcadia, and afterwards SPENSER in his Fairy Queen, observed so unnatural a conduct in those works; in which the Story proceeds, as it were, by snatches, and with continual interruptions? How was the good sense of those writers, so conversant besides in the best models of antiquity, seduced into this preposterous method? The answer, no doubt, is, that they were copying the design, or disorder 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 observe "in the representa"tion of certain TENETS, different from those "which prevail in a writer's country or time,” 1. We seldom are able to fasten an imitation, with certainty, on such a writer as Shakespear. Sometimes we are, but never to so much advantage as when he happens to forget himself in this respect. When Claudio, in Measure for Measure, pleads for his life in that famous speech, Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; It is plain that these are not the Sentiments which any man entertained of Death in the writer's age or in that of the speaker. We see in this passage a mixture of Christian and Pagan ideas; all of them very susceptible of poetical ornament, and conducive to the argument of the Scene; but such as Shakespear had never dreamt of but for Virgil's Platonic hell; where, as we read, aliae panduntur inanes Suspensae ad ventos: aliis sub gurgite vasto, Infectum eluitur scelus, aut exuritur igni. Virg. 1. vi. 3. A prodigiously fine passage in Milton may furnish another example of this sort, When Lust By unchast looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, Mask at Ludlow Castle. |