is more "desert" than another, the authority of Shakespeare himself will not hinder us to doubt. It is often highly 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 the disguises that mutilation, 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 perspicacity, and an adept in the art of discerning likenesses, even when minute; with examples properly selected, and gradations duly marked; would make an important accession to the store of human literature, and furnish rational curiosity with a high regale. ness of the gem remained folded up in the crust; or the flower been frostnipt in the bud, the images had been in point. Of the images themselves I have already allowed the merit. They are both, however, to be found in Thomson, from whom Gray seems to have borrowed more than he thought fit to acknowledge. Speaking of the influence of the sun, and the universal operation of light; he says, in the way of address to the great operator, The unfruitful rock itself, impregn'd by thee, In dark retirement forms the lucid stone. The lively diamond drinks thy purest rays; And, describing the retirement of a rural beauty, As, in the hollow breast of Apennine, A myrtle rises, far from human eye, In the former example, the "diamond" of Thomson becomes the "gem" of Gray. Both are formed in retirement; though Gray has changed the place; and transplanted the diamond into the sea, for causes that do not appear, and with a propriety of which criticism entertains a doubt. Both stones are of "purest ray." Of the latter image, the identity is still more obvious; although it has been disguised by the change of a myrtle into a flower; and, perhaps, by a shifting of the scene from Italy to Arabia Deserta. Why a flower was thought more eligible than a myrtle, or a desert more proper than a shelter'd waste, for rearing a tender plant, we are not informed. To see the sense of justice return, is pleasant, even when the return is late. Gray, to wards the end of his life, dived for the gem; and, having brought it up, replanted it in the earth, to be "raised," (not disloyally I hope) to grace a diadem. To the myrtle he made also signal amends, for its long transformation into a flower, by a supplicat, through the chancellor of his university, to have it raised from its metamorphosis to the dignity of the mitre. Thy liberal heart, thy judging eye, Thomson's myrtle "breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild;" Gray's flower "wastes its sweetness on the desert air.” "Wastes," in place of " breathes," is an improvement; though, whether one air 'Installation Ode. is more" desert" than another, the authority of Shakespeare himself will not hinder us to doubt. It is often highly 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 the disguises that mutilation, 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 perspicacity, and an adept in the art of discerning likenesses, even when minute; with examples properly selected, and gradations duly marked; would make an important accession to the store of human literature, and furnish rational curiosity with a high regale. |