1798.) 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES. 
(Continued from the Magazine for May.) 
OUNG, in his ‘* Love of Fame,” 
feems very adroitly to have im- 
proved on a witty conceit of Butler. It 
is curious to obferve, that while Butler 
has made a remote allufion of a window 
to a pillory, a conceit is grafted on this 
conceit, with even more exquifite wit. 
Each window, like the pillory appears, 
With deads thruft through, nailed by the ears. 
Hudibras, part ii. c. 3. v. 391. 
An opera, like a pillory, may be faid 
_ To nail our ears down, and excpofe our bead. 
Young’s Satires. 
When Pope compofed the following 
lines on Fame, 
How vain that fecond Ife in other’s breath, 
Th? efare'which wits inherit after death ; 
Kafe, health, amd life, for this they muft 
refign ; 
(Unfure the tenure, but how vaft the fize !) 
Temple of Fame, 
He feems to have had prefent in his mind, 
a fingle idea of Butler, by which he has 
very happily amplified the entire imagery. 
Butler fays, 
Honour’s a leafe for lives to come, 
And cannot be extended from 
The legal tenant—— Hud. parti. c. 3. v. 1043. 
Dryden, in his ** Abfalom and Achito- 
pel,” fays of the Earl of Shaftefbury, 
David for him his tuneful harp had ftrung, 
And heaw'n had wanted one immzrtal fong. 
This verfe was ringing in the ear of 
Pope, when with equal modefty and feli- 
city he adopted it, in addrefling Dr, Ar- 
buthnot. 
Friend of my life, which did not you prolofig, 
The world bad wanted many an idle Jong. 
‘Howel, in his letters, has prefixed a 
t&dious poem, written in the tafte of his 
times, and he there fays of Letters, that 
they are 
The heralds and fwift harbingers, that move 
From cafito weff, on embaffies of love ; 
They can the tropic cut, and crofe the linc= 
{t is probable that Pope had noted this 
thought, for the following- lines feem a 
beautiful heightening of the idea. 
“Heav'n firft taught Jetters, for fome wretch’s 
aid, 
Some banith'd /ower, er fome captive maid. 
Then he adds, 
Speed the foft intercourfe from foul to feul, 
And wafta figh from Inaus to the pole. 
Elafa. 
There is another paflage in ‘* Howel’s 
Letters,’ which has a great affinity with 
a thought of Pope, who in ‘* The Rape 
of the Lock,” fays, 
 MontTury MAG, Ne XxXv. 
Imitations and Similarities, continued. 113 
Fair treffes, man’s imperial race enfnarey 
And beauty draws us with a fingle bair. 
Howel writes in his collegtion, p. 29° 
—“°Tis a powerful fex ; they were too 
ftrong for the firft, the ftrongeft and 
‘wifeft man that was; they muft needs be 
ftrong, when oxe hair of a@ «woman can 
draw more than an hundred patr of oxen. 
Johnfon bitterly cenfures Gray, m 
thefe words— There has of late arifon 
a practice of giving to adjectives, de- 
rived from fubftantives, the termination 
of participles ; fuch as the cultured plain, 
the daified bank ; but I was forry to fee, m 
the lines of a {cholar like Gray, ‘* the 
honied {pring.?. I confefs, I was neves 
forry, nor furprifed; and had Johnfor 
received but the fainteft tin€ture of the 
Italian {chool of Englifh poetry, he 
never would have formed fo taftelefs a 
criticifm. Honiedis employed by Milton 
in more places than one.—But one 1s fuf- 
ficient for my purpofe. 
Hide me from day’s garifh eye, 
While the bee, with nonrep thigh, &c. 
7 Il Penferofo, V- 142» 
Pope’s defcription of the death of the 
lamb in his ** Effay on Man,” is finifhed 
with the niceft touches, and is one of the 
moft exquifite images our poetry exhibits. 
Even familiar q$ itis to our ear, one 
can never examine it but with the fame 
admiration. 
The Lambthy riot dooms to bleed toeday, 
Had he thy reafon, would he skip and play ¢ 
Pleafed to the laft, he crops the flow’ry food, 
And licks the hand juft rais’d to hed his 
blood. - 
After having psufed over fuoh fine 
verfes, will not the reader fmile, that 1 
fhould conjefture the image might frit 
have been found in the following humble 
verfes, in a poem which was once conii- 
dered not as contemptible, 
A gentle /amb has rhetoric to plead, 
And when fhe fees the butcher’s knife de- 
creed, 
Her voice intreats him not to make her bleed, 
Dr. King’s Mully of Meuntown. 
This natural and touching image 
might have been obferved by Pope, with- 
out having at firft been traced througn 
the lefs polifhed lens, of the telefcope of 
Dr. King. It is certainly a fimtarity; 
and is given as an example, inthe ** Ar? _ 
of Comprfiion,” im what manner we may 
raife the humbleft conception; and vet 
the fordid nullity of a diftreffed vagabond, 
by teaching it that GRACE which adorns 
the purple it wears, 
P Gray 
i 
