Some writers, usually pedants, imagine that they can supply, by the
labours of industry, the deficiencies of nature. Paulus Manutius
frequently spent a month in writing a single letter. He affected to
imitate Cicero. But although he painfully attained to something of the
elegance of his style, destitute of the native graces of unaffected
composition, he was one of those whom Erasmus bantered in his
_Ciceronianus_, as so slavishly devoted to Cicero's style, that they
ridiculously employed the utmost precautions when they were seized by a
Ciceronian fit. The _Nosoponus_ of Erasmus tells of his devotion to
Cicero; of his three indexes to all his words, and his never writing but
in the dead of night, employing months upon a few lines; and his
religious veneration for _words_, with his total indifference about the
_sense_.
Le Brun, a Jesuit, was a singular instance of such unhappy imitation. He
was a Latin poet, and his themes were religious. He formed the
extravagant project of substituting a _religious Virgil_ and _Ovid_
merely by adapting his works to their titles. His _Christian Virgil_
consists, like the Pagan Virgil, of _Eclogues_, _Georgics_, and of an
_Epic_ of twelve books; with this difference, that devotional subjects
are substituted for fabulous ones. His epic is the _Ignaciad_, or the
pilgrimage of Saint Ignatius. His _Christian Ovid_, is in the same
taste; everything wears a new face. His _Epistles_ are pious ones; the
_Fasti_ are the six days of the Creation; the _Elegies_ are the six
Lamentations of Jeremiah; a poem on _the Love of God_ is substituted for
the _Art of Love_; and the history of some _Conversions_ supplies the
place of the _Metamorphoses_! This Jesuit would, no doubt, have approved
of a _family Shakspeare_!
A poet of a far different character, the elegant Sannazarius, has done
much the same thing in his poem _De Partu Virginis_. The same servile
imitation of ancient taste appears. It professes to celebrate the birth
of _Christ_, yet his name is not once mentioned in it! The _Virgin_
herself is styled _spes deorum_! "The hope of the gods!" The
_Incarnation_ is predicted by _Proteus_! The Virgin, instead of
consulting the _sacred writings_, reads the _Sibylline oracles_! Her
attendants are _dryads_, _nereids_, &c. This monstrous mixture of
polytheism with the mysteries of Christianity, appears in everything he
had about him. In a chapel at one of his country seats he had two
statues placed at his tomb, _Apollo_ and _Minerva_; catholic piety found
no difficulty in the present case, as well as in innumerable others of
the same kind, to inscribe the statue of _Apollo_ with the name of
_David_, and that of _Minerva_ with the female one of _Judith_!
Seneca, in his 114th Epistle, gives a curious literary anecdote of the
sort of imitation by which an inferior mind becomes the monkey of an
original writer. At Rome, when Sallust was the fashionable writer, short
sentences, uncommon words, and an obscure brevity, were affected as so
many elegances. Arruntius, who wrote the history of the Punic Wars,
painfully laboured to imitate Sallust. Expressions which are rare in
Sallust are frequent in Arruntius, and, of course, without the motive
that induced Sallust to adopt them. What rose naturally under the pen of
the great historian, the minor one must have run after with ridiculous
anxiety. Seneca adds several instances of the servile affectation of
Arruntius, which seem much like those we once had of Johnson, by the
undiscerning herd of his apes.
One cannot but smile at these imitators; we have abounded with them. In
the days of Churchill, every month produced an effusion which tolerably
imitated his slovenly versification, his coarse invective, and his
careless mediocrity,--but the genius remained with the English Juvenal.
Sterne had his countless multitude; and in Fielding's time, Tom Jones
produced more bastards in wit than the author could ever suspect. To
such literary echoes, the reply of Philip of Macedon to one who prided
himself on imitating the notes of the nightingale may be applied: "I
prefer the nightingale herself!" Even the most successful of this
imitating tribe must be doomed to share the fate of Silius Italicus, in
his cold imitation of Virgil, and Cawthorne in his empty harmony of
Pope.
To all these imitators I must apply an Arabian anecdote. Ebn Saad, one
of Mahomet's amanuenses, when writing what the prophet dictated, cried
out by way of admiration--"Blessed be God, the best Creator!" Mahomet
approved of the expression, and desired him to write those words down as
part of the inspired passage.--The consequence was, that Ebn Saad began
to think himself as great a prophet as his master, and took upon himself
to imitate the Koran according to his fancy; but the imitator got
himself into trouble, and only escaped with life by falling on his
knees, and solemnly swearing he would never again imitate the Koran, for
which he was sensible God had never created him.