family to celebrate the heir's completion of his twenty-firft year, by an entertainment, at which the house is thrown open to all that are inclined to enter it, and the whole province flocks together as to a general feftivity. On this occafion young Blufter exhibited the first tokens of his future eminence, by fhaking his purfe at an old gentleman, who had been the intimate friend of his father, and offering to wager a greater fum than he could afford to venture; a practice with which he has, at one time or other, infulted every freeholder within ten miles round him. His next acts of offence were committed in a contentious and spiteful vindication of the privileges of his manors, and a rigorous and relentless profecution of every man that prefumed to violate his game. As he happens to have no eftate adjoining equal to his own, his oppreffions are often borne without refiftance, for fear of a long fuit, of which he delights to count the expences without the leaft folicitude about the event; for he knows, that where nothing but an honorary right is contefted, the poorer antagonist muft always fuffer, whatever fhall be the last decifion of the law. By the fuccefs of fome of thefe difputes, he has fo elated his infolence, and by reflection upon the general hatred which they have brought upon him, fo irritated his virulence, that his whole life is fpent in meditating or executing mifchief. It is his common practice to procure his hedges to be broken in the night, and then to demand fatisfaction for damages which his grounds have fuffered from his neighbour's cattle. An old widow was yefterday foliciting Eugenio to enable her to replevin her only cow then in the pound by Squire Blufter's order, who had fent one of his agents to take advantage of her calamity, and perfuade her to fell the cow at an under rate. He has driven a daylabourer from his cottage, for gathering blackberries in a hedge for his children; and has now an old woman in the county-jail for a trefpafs which the committed, by coming into his ground to pick up acorns for her hog, Money, in whatever hands, will confer power. Diftrels will fly to immedi ate refuge, without much confideration of remote confequences. Blufter has therefore a defpotick authority in many families, whom he has affifted, on preffing occafions, with larger fums than they can easily repay. The only vifits that he makes are to thofe houses of miffortune, where he enters with the infolence of abfolute command, enjoys the terrors of the family, exacts their obedience, riots at their charge, and in the height of his joy infults the father with menaces, and the daughters with obfcenity. He is of late fomewhat lefs offenfive; for one of his debtors, after gentle expoftulations, by which he was only irritated to groffer outrage, feized him by the fleeve, led him trembling into the court-yard, and clofed the door upon him in a stormy night. He took his ufual revenge next morning by a writ ; but the debt was difcharged by the affiftance of Eugenio. It is his rule to fuffer his tenants to owe him rent, because by this indulgence he fecures to himself the power of feizure whenever he has an inclination to amuse himself with calamity, and feast his ears with entreaties and lamentations. Yet as he is fometimes capriciously liberal to thofe whom he happens to adopt as favourites, and lets his lands at a cheap rate, his farms are never long unoccupied; and when one is ruined by oppreffion, the poffibility of better fortune quickly lures another to fupply his place. Such is the life of Squire Blufter; man in whofe power fortune has liberally placed the means of happiness, but who has defeated all her gifts of their end by the depravity of his mind. He is wealthy without followers; he is magnificent without witneffes; he has birth without alliance, and influence without dignity. His neighbours fcorn him as a brute; his dependents dread him as an oppreffor; and he has only the gloomy comfort of reflecting, that if he is hated, he is likewife feared, I am, Sir, &c. VAGULUS, N° CLXIII. CXLIII. TUESDAY, JULY 30, 1751. MOVEAT CORNICULA RISUM FURTIVIS NUDATA COLORIBUS. HOR. LIST WHEN THE BIRDS THEIR VARIOUS COLOURS CLAIM STRIPP'D OF HIS STOLEN PRIDE, THE CROW FORLORN SHOULD STAND THE LAUGHTER OF THE PUBLICK SCORN. MONG the innumerable practices Ay which interest or deny have taught those who live upon literary fame to difturb each other at their airy banquets, one of the most common is the charge of plagiarism. When the excellence of a new compofition can no longer be contested, and malice is compelled to give way to the unanimity of applaufe, there is yet this one expedient to be tried, by which the author may be degraded, though his work be reverenced; and the excellence which we cannot obscure, may be set at fuch a distance as not to overpower our fainter luftre. This accusation is dangerous, because, even when it is false, it may be fometimes urged with probability. Bruyere declares, that we are come into the world too late to produce any thing new, that nature and life are preoccupied, and that description and fentiment have been long exhausted. It is indeed certain, that whoever attempts any common topick, will find unexpected coincidences of his thoughts with thofe of other writers; nor can the niceft judgment always diftinguish accidental fimilitude from artful imitation. There is likewife a com mon stock of images, a fettled mode of arrangement, and a beaten track of tranfition, which all authors fuppofe themselves at liberty to use, and which produce the resemblance generally obfervable among cotemporaries. So that in books which best deferve the name of originals, there is little new beyond the difpofition of materials already provided; the fame ideas and combinations of ideas have been long in the poffeffion of other hands; and by restoring to every man his own, as the Romans must have returned to their cots from the poffeffion of the world, fo the most inventive and fertile genius would reduce his folios to a few pages. Yet the author who imitates his predeceffors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and FRANCIS. elegancies out of the fame general ma gazine of literature, can with little more propriety be reproached as a plagiary, than the architect can be cenfured as a mean copier of Angelo or Wren, becaufe he digs his marble from the fame quarry, fquares his ftones by the fame art, and unites them in columns of the fame orders. Many fubjects fall under the confi deration of an author, which being limited by nature can admit only of flight and accidental diverfities. All definitions of the fame thing must be nearly the fame; and defcriptions, which are definitions of a more lax and fanciful kind, must always have in fome degree that refemblance to each other which they all have to their object. Different poets defcribing the fpring or the fea, would mention the zephyrs and the flowers, the billows and the rocks; reflecting on human life, they would, without any communication of opinions, lament the deceitfulness of hope, the fugacity of pleafure, the fragility of beauty, and the frequency of calamity; and for palliatives of thefe incurable miferies, they would concur in recommending kindness, temperance, caution, and fortitude. When therefore there are found in Virgil and Horace two fimilar paffages Hæ tibi erunt artes VIRG. other, fince neither Virgil nor Horace can be fuppofed ignorant of the common duties of humanity, and the virtue of moderation in fuccefs. Cicero and Ovid have on very different occafions remarked how little of the honour of a victory belongs to the general, when his foldiers and his fortune have made their deductions; yet why Should Ovid be fufpected to have owed to Tully an obfervation which perhaps occurs to every man that fees or hears of military glories? Tully obferves of Achilles, that had not Homer written, his valour had been without praise. Nifi Ilias illa extitiffet, idem tumulus qui corpus ejus contexerat, nomen ejus obruiffet. Unless the Iliad had been publifhed, his name had been loft in the tomb that covered his body. Horace tells us with more energy, that there were brave men before the wars of Troy, but they were loft in oblivion for want of a poet. Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Nocle, carent quia vate facro. In the fmall compass of a grave: own. FRANCIS. Tully enquires, in the fame oration, why, but for fame, we disturb a fhort life with fo many fatigues? Quid eft quod in hoc tam exiguo vite curri culo et tam brevi, tantis nos in laboribus Why in fo fmail a circuit of life should we Horace enquires in the fame manner- Why do we aim, with eager ftrife, FRANCIS. when our life is of fo fhort duration, why we form fuch numerous defigns? But Horace, as well as Tully, might difcover that records are needful to pre ferve the memory of actions, and that no records were fo durable as poems ; either of them might find out that life is short, and that we confume it in unneceffary labour. There are other flowers of fiction fo widely fscattered and fo easily cropped, that it is fcarcely just to tax the use of them as an act by which any particular writer is defpoiled of his garland; for they may be faid to have been planted by the ancients in the open road of poetry for the accommodation of their fucceffors, and to be the right of every one that has art to pluck them without injuring their colours or their fragrance. The paffage of Orpheus to hell, with the recovery and fecond lofs of Eurydice, have been defcribed after Boetius by Pope, in fuch a manner as might justly leave him fufpected of imitation, both have derived from more ancient were not the images fuch as they might writers. Que fontes agitant metu Jam mafta lacrymis œadent, The pow'rs of vengeance, while they hear, Fix'd in attention to the found. F. LEWIS. Thy stone, O Syfiphus, ftands still, And the pale fpectres dance! He fung, and Hell confented To hear the poet's prayer; And gave him back the fair. Heu, notis prope terminos Nor yet the golden verge of day begun, At once beheld, and loft, and was undone. But But foon, too foon, the lover turns his eyes: Again the falls, again the dies, the dies! be No writer can be fully convicted of imitation, except there is a concurrence of more refemblance than can imagined to have happened by chance; as where the fame ideas are conjoined without any natural feries or neceffary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are copied. Thus it can fcarcely be doubted, that in the first of the following paffages Pope remembered Ovid, and that in the fecond he copied Crashaw. Sape pater dixit, ftudium quid inutile tentas ? OVID. N° CXLIV. SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1751J DAPHNIDIS ARCUM FRIGISTI ET CALAMOS: QUÆ TU, PERVERSE MENALCA, VIRG. THE BOW OF DAPHNIS AND THE SHAFTS YOU BROKE Tis impoffible to mingle in convería DRYDEN. A incited by thofe who imagine themfelves It to eving time difhculty in danger of fuffering by their fuccefs, with which a new name makes it's way into the world. The first appearance of excellence unites multitudes against it, unexpected opposition rifes up on every fule; the celebrated and the obfcure join in the confederacy; fubtilty furnishes arms to impudence, and invention leads on credulity. The ftrength and unanimity of this alliance is not eafily conceived. It might be expected that no man fhould fuffer his heart to be inflamed with malice, but by injuries; that none fhould bufy himself in contefting the pretenfions of another, but when fome right of his own was involved in the question; that at leaft hoftilities commenced without caufe, fhould quickly ceafe; that the armies of malignity fhould foon difperfe, when no common intereft could be found to hold them together; and that the attack upon a rifing character fhould be left to those who had fomething to hope or fear from the event. The hazards of those that afpire to eminence would be much diminished if they had none but acknowledged rivals to encounter. Their enemies would then be few, and what is of yet greater importance, would be known. But what caution is fufficient to ward off the blows of invifible affailants, or what force can stand against unintermitted attacks, and a continued fucceffion of ene mies? Yet fuch is the state of the world, that no fooner can any man emerge from the crowd, and fix the eyes of the publick upon him, than he ftands as a mark to the arrows of lurking calumny, and receives in the tumult of hoftility, from dittant and from nameless hands, wounds not always easy to be cured. It is probable that the onfet against the candidates for renown is originally but when war is once declared, volun-. teers flock to the standard, multitudes follow the camp only for want of employment, and flying fquadrons are difperfed to every part, fo pleafed with an opportunity of mifchief, that they toil without profpect of praife, and pillage without hope of profit. When any man has endeavoured to deferve distinction, he will be furprised to hear himself cenfured where he could not expect to have been named; he will find the utmoft acrimony of malice among thofe whom he never could have offended. As there are to be found in the fervice of envy men of every diverfity of temper and degree of understanding, calumny is diffufed by all arts and methods of propagation. Nothing is too grofs or too refined, too cruel or too trifling, to be practifed; very little regard is had to the rules of honourable hoftility, but every weapon is accounted lawful, and thofe that cannot make a thrust at life are content to keep themselves in play with petty malevolence, to teize with feeble blows and impotent disturbance. But as the induftry of observation has divided the most miscellaneous and confufed affemblages into proper claffes, and ranged the infects of the fummer, that torment us with their drones or ftings, by their feveral tribes; the perfecutors of merit, notwithstanding their numbers, may be likewife commodiously diftinguished into Roarers, Whisperers, and Moderators. The Roarer is an enemy rather terrible than dangerous. He has no other qualification for a champion of controverfy than a hardened front and ftrong voice. Having feldom fo much defire to confute as to filence, he depends rather upon vociferation |