A plan like the present, even in a mind which should feel itself incapable of the exertion, will not be regarded without that reverence we feel for genius animating such industry.  This scheme of study, though it may never be rigidly pursued, will be found excellent.  Ten years’ labour of happy diligence may render a student capable of consigning to posterity a history as universal in its topics, as that of the historian who led to this investigation.

POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES.

Tantus amor florum, et generandi gloria mellis.
Georg. Lib. iv. v. 204.

Such rage of honey in our bosom beats,
And such a zeal we have for flowery sweets! 
DRYDEN.

This article was commenced by me many years ago in the early volumes of the Monthly Magazine, and continued by various correspondents, with various success.  I have collected only those of my own contribution, because I do not feel authorised to make use of those of other persons, however some may be desirable.  One of the most elegant of literary recreations is that of tracing poetical or prose imitations and similarities; for assuredly, similarity is not always imitation.  Bishop Hurd’s pleasing essay on “The Marks of Imitation” will assist the critic in deciding on what may only be an accidental similarity, rather than a studied imitation.  Those critics have indulged an intemperate abuse in these entertaining researches, who from a single word derive the imitation of an entire passage.  Wakefield, in his edition of Gray, is very liable to this censure.

This kind of literary amusement is not despicable:  there are few men of letters who have not been in the habit of marking parallel passages, or tracing imitation, in the thousand shapes it assumes; it forms, it cultivates, it delights taste to observe by what dexterity and variation genius conceals, or modifies, an original thought or image, and to view the same sentiment, or expression, borrowed with art, or heightened by embellishment.  The ingenious writer of “A Criticism on Gray’s Elegy, in continuation of Dr. Johnson’s,” has given some observations on this subject, which will please.  “It is often 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 all the disguises that imitation, 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 perspicuity, an adept in the art of discerning likenesses, even when minute, with examples properly selected, and gradations duly marked, would make an impartial accession to the store of human literature, and furnish rational curiosity with a high regale.”