Tantus amor florum, et generandi gloria mellis.
_Georg._ Lib. iv. v. 204.
Such rage of honey in our bosom beats,
And such a zeal we have for flowery sweets!
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.
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, 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 retouched
with all the art of genius.