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researches present to his eye. If we look into public libra ries, more than thirty thousand volumes of history may be found.

Lenglet du Fresnoy, one of the greatest readers, calculated that he could not read, with satisfaction, more than ten hours a day, and ten pages in folio an hour; which makes one hundred pages every day. Supposing each volume to contain one thousand pages, every month would amount to three volumes, which make thirty-six volumes in folio in the year. In fifty years a student could only read eighteen hundred volumes in folio. All this, too, supposing uninterrupted health, and an intelligence as rapid as the eyes of the laborious researcher. A man can hardly study to advantage till past twenty, and at fifty his eyes will be dimmed, and his head stuffed with much reading that should never be read. His fifty years for eighteen hundred volumes are reduced to thirty years, and one thousand volumes! And, after all, the universal historian must resolutely face thirty thousand volumes!

But to cheer the historiographer, he shows, that a public library is only necessary to be consulted; it is in our private closet where should be found those few writers who direct us to their rivals, without jealousy, and mark, in the vast career of time, those who are worthy to instruct posterity. His calculation proceeds on this plan, that six hours a day, and the term of ten years, are sufficient to pass over, with utility, the immense field of history.

He calculates an alarming extent of historical ground.

For a knowledge of Sacred History he gives .

Ancient Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria, modern Assyria

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To this may be added for recurrences and re-perusals

3 months.

1 do.

6 do.

7 do.

6 do.

30 do.

24 do.

48 do.

The total will amount to 10 years.

Thus, in ten years and a half, a student in history has obtained an universal knowledge, and this on a plan which permits as much leisure as every student would choose to indulge.

As a specimen of Du Fresnoy's calculations, take that of Sacred History.

For reading Père Calmet's learned dissertations in the
order he points out

For Père Calmet's History, in 2 vols. 4to (now in 4)
For Prideaux's History

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12 days.

12

10

12

20

In all 66 days.

He allows, however, ninety days for obtaining a sufficient knowledge of Sacred History.

In reading this sketch, we are scarcely surprised at the erudition of a Gibbon; but having admired that erudition, we perceive the necessity of such a plan, if we would not learn what we have afterwards to unlearn.

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." Let me premise that these notices (the wrecks of a large collection of passages I had once formed merely as exercises to form my taste) are not given with the petty malignant delight of detecting the unacknowledged imitations of our best writers, but merely to habituate the young student to an instructive amusement, and to exhibit that beautiful variety which the same image is capable of exhibiting when retouched with all the art of genius.

Gray, in his "Ode to Spring," has

The Attic warbler POURS HER THROAT.

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Wakefield in his "Commentary" has a copious passage on this poetical diction. He conceives it to be an admirable improvement of the Greek and Roman classics :"

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This learned editor was little conversant with modern literature, as he proved by his memorable editions of Gray and Pope. The expression is evidently borrowed not from Hesiod, nor from Lucretius, but from a brother at home.

Is it for thee, the Linnet POURS HER THROAT?

Essay on Man, Ep. iii. v. 33.

Gray, in the "Ode to Adversity," addresses the power thus,

Thou tamer of the human breast,

Whose IRON SCOURGE and TORTURING HOUR

The bad affright, afflict the best.

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Wakefield censures the expression "torturing hour," by discovering an impropriety and incongruity. He says, consistency of figure rather required some material image, like iron scourge and adamantine chain." It is curious to observe a verbal critic lecture such a poet as Gray! The poet probably would never have replied, or, in a moment of excessive urbanity, he might have condescended to point out to this minutest of critics the following passage in Milton:

When the SCOURGE

Inexorably, and the TORTURING HOUR
Calls us to penance.

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Par. Lost, B. ii. v. 90.

Gray, in his "Ode to Adversity," has

Light THEY DISPERSE, and with them go

The SUMMER FRIEND.

Fond of this image, he has it again in his "Bard,”

They SWARM, that in thy NOONTIDE BEAM are born,

Gone!

Perhaps the germ of this beautiful image may be found in Shakspeare:

for men, like BUTTERFLIES,

Show not their mealy wings but to THE SUMMER.

Troilus and Cressida, Act iii. s. 7.

And two similar passages in Timon of Athens :

The swallow follows not summer more willingly than we your lordship.

Timon. Nor more willingly leaves winter; such summer birds are men.-Act iii.

Again in the same,

one cloud of winter showers These flies are couch'd.-Act ii.

Gray, in his "Progress of Poetry," has

In climes beyond the SOLAR ROAD.

Wakefield has traced this imitation to Dryden; Gray himself refers to Virgil and Petrarch. Wakefield gives the line from Dryden, thus:

Beyond the year, and out of heaven's high-way;

which he calls extremely bold and poetical. I confess a critic might be allowed to be somewhat fastidious in this unpoetical diction on the high-way, which I believe Dryden never used. I think his line was thus::

Beyond the year, out of the SOLAR WALK.

Pope has expressed the image more elegantly, though copied from Dryden,

Far as the SOLAR WALK, or milky way.

Gray has in his "Bard,"

Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.

Gray himself points out the imitation in Shakspeare of the latter image; but it is curious to observe that Otway, in his Venice Preserved, makes Priuli most pathetically exclaim to his daughter, that she is

Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life,

Dear as these eyes that weep in fondness o'er thee. Gray tells us that the image of his "Bard,"

Loose his beard and hoary hair

Streamed like a METEOR to the troubled air,

was taken from a picture of the Supreme Being by Raphael. It is, however, remarkable, and somewhat ludicrous, that the beard of Hudibras is also compared to a meteor: and the accompanying observation of Butler almost induces one to think that Gray derived from it the whole plan of that sublime Ode-since his Bard precisely performs what the beard of Hudibras denounced. These are the verses :

This HAIRY METEOR did denounce
The fall of sceptres and of crowns.

Hudibras, c. 1.

I have been asked if I am serious in my conjecture that "the meteor beard" of Hudibras might have given birth to the "Bard" of Gray? I reply, that the burlesque and the sublime are extremes, and extremes meet. How often does it

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