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Passages of fuch fimilarity in fentiment and exprefllou cer- 

 tainly fliew the peculiar fondncfs with which Goldfmith looked 

 on any work which he had once given from his hands, and 

 which fo chained down his imagination to one mode of confi- 

 dering a fubjed that whenever that fubjed recurred the author 

 could not view it but in the very fame light. Goldfmith how- 

 ever appears fometimes to have caught the fame fondnefs for 

 fentiments which had been expreffed by other authors, and, as 

 if unconfcious of their original, delivers them in their identical 

 words and forms of fpeech. Pope has the following couplet : 



To favage beads and favagc laws a prey, 

 And kings more furious and fevere than they, 



the laft line of which is of the very fame flr\idure with one 

 of our author's quoted in page 83. And no perfon can be 

 prevailed on for a moment to imagine that there is not fome- 

 thing more than a cafual coincidence between Goldfmith's 



Man wants but little here below 

 Nor wants that little long, 



And Young's, 



Man wants but little, nor that little long. 



Surely the author who could borrow with fo flender artifice 

 could not fufped himfelf of plagiarifm and muft have miftaken 

 the treafures of his reading for the conceptions of his fancy. 



This 



