A 1-5 Printed for W. THURLBOURN & J. WOODYER; and M DCC LVII. A LETTER to Mr. MASON. DEAR SIR, I CHANCTION, CHANC'D to fay in the difcourfe on POETICAL "that coincidencies of a certain "kind, and in a certain degree, cannot fail to convict a writer of Imitation." You are sometimes curious to know what these coincidencies are, and have thought that an attempt to point them out would furnish an useful Supplement to what I have written on this fubject. You urge me too to this attempt by the promise, it seems, I made of engaging in it. But have you obferv'd what I said at the same time, "That fuch a defign would require, befides a care"ful examination of the workings of the human “mind, an exact scrutiny of the most original and "most imitative writers." a And, with all your par DISC. on POET. IMIT. p. 209. 2d Ed. tiality for me, can you, in earneft, think me capable of fulfilling the first of thefe conditions; Or, if I were, do you imagine that, at this time o' day, I can have the leifure to perform the other? My younger years, indeed, have been spent in turning over those authors which young men are moft fond of; and amongst these I will not disown that the Poets of antient and modern fame have had their full share in my affection. But You, who love me so well, would not wish me to pafs more of my life in these flowery regions; which tho' You may yet wander in without offence, and the rather as you wander in them with fo pure a mind and to fo moral a purpose, there feems no decent pretence for me to loiter in them. any longer. Yet in faying this I would not be thought to affume that fevere character; which, tho' fometimes the garb of reason, is oftener, I believe, the mask of dullness, or of fomething worfe. No, I am too fenfible to the charms, nay to the ufes of your profeffion, to affect a contempt for it. The great Roman faid well, Haec ftudia adolefcentiam alunt; feneEtutem oblectant. We make a full meal of them in our youth. And no philofophy requires fo perfect a mortification as that we should wholly abftain from them in our riper years. But fhould we reverse the obfervation; and take this light food not as the refreshment only, but as the proper nourishment of Age; fuch a name, as Cicero's, I am afraid, would be wanting, and not eafily found, to justify the practice. Let |