the diligence, acuteness, and perseverance of a youth at the uni versity have no other reward than some college-honours and emoluments, which they desire to exchange, many of them for very moderate incomes in the obscurity of some distant village: so that, in stating the reward of an ardent and powerful mind, to consist principally (I might have said entirely) in its own views, efforts and excursions, I place it upon a sure foundation, though not one so elevated as the more ambitious aspire to. It is surely some encouragement to a studious man to reflect, that if he be disappointed, he cannot be without gratification; and that if he gets but a very humble portion of what the world can give, he has a continual fruition of unwearying enjoyment, of which it has not power to deprive him. Long as I have detained the reader, I take leave to add a few words on the subject of imitation, or, more plainly speaking, borrowing. In the course of a long poem, and more especially of two long ones, it is very difficult to avoid a recurrence of the same thoughts, and of similar expressions; and, however careful I have been myself in detecting and removing these kind of repetitions, my readers, I question not, would, if disposed to seek them, find many remaining. For these I can only plead that common excuse they are the offences of a bad memory, and not of voluntary inattention; to which I must add, the difficulty (I have already mentioned) of avoiding the error: this kind of plagiarism will therefore, I conceive, be treated with lenity: and of the more criminal kind, borrowing from others, I plead, with much confidence, "not guilty." But while I claim exemption from guilt, I do not affirm that much of sentiment and much of expression may not be detected in the vast collection of English poetry: it is sufficient for an author, that he uses not the words or ideas of another without acknowledgment, and this, and no more than this, I mean, by disclaiming debts of the kind; yet resemblances are sometimes so very striking, that it requires faith in a reader to admit they were undesigned. A line in the second letter, "And monuments themselves memorials need," was written long before the author, in an accidental recourse to Juvenal, read "Quandoquidem data sunt ipsis quoque fata sepulchris." Sat. x, 146. And for this I believe the reader will readily give me credit. But there is another apparent imitation in the life of Blaney (letter XIV,) a similie of so particular a kind, that its occurrence to two writers at the same time must appear as an extraordinary event; for this reason I once determined to exclude it from the relation; but, as it was truly unborrowed, and suited the place in which it. stood, this seemed, on after-consideration, to be an act of cowardice, and the lines are therefore printed as they were written about two months before the very same thought (prosaically drest) appeared in a periodical work of the last summer. It is highly probable, in these cases, that both may derive the idea from a forgotten but common source; and in this way I must entreat the reader to do me justice, by accounting for other such resemblances, should any be detected. I know not whether to some readers the placing two or three Latin quotations to a letter may not appear pedantic and ostentatious, while both they and the English ones may be thought unnecessary. For the necessity I have not much to advance; but if they be allowable, (and certainly the best writers have adopted them,) then, where two or three different subjects occur, so many of these mottos seem to be required: nor will a charge of pedantry remain, when it be considered that these things are generally taken from some books familiar to the school-boy, and the selecting them is facilitated by the use of a book of common-place: yet, with this help, the task of motto-hunting has been so unpleasant to me, that I have in various instances given up the quotation I was in pursuit of, and substituted such English verse or prose as I could find or invent for my purpose. |