F. LEWIS.
Thy stone, O Sysiphus, stands still,
Ixion rests upon the wheel,
And the pale spectres dance!
The furies sink upon their iron beds. POPE
_Tandem, vincimur, arbiter
Umbrarum, miserans, ait--
Donemus, comitem viro,
Emtam carmine, conjugem_.
Subdu'd at length, Hell's pitying monarch cry'd,
The song rewarding, let us yield the bride. F. LEWIS.
He sung; and hell consented
To hear the poet's prayer;
Stern Proserpine relented,
And gave him back the fair. POPE
_Heu, noctis prope terminos
Orpheus Eurydicen suam
Vidit, perdidit, occidit_.
Nor yet the golden verge of day begun,
When Orpheus, her unhappy lord,
Eurydice to life restor'd,
At once beheld, and lost, and was undone. F. LEWIS.
But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes:
Again she falls, again she dies, she dies! POPE.
No writer can be fully convicted of imitation, except there is a
concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have happened by
chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined without any natural series
or necessary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are
copied. Thus it can scarcely be doubted, that in the first of the
following passages Pope remembered Ovid, and that in the second he
copied Crashaw:
_Saepe pater dixit, studium quid inutile tentas?
Maeonides nullas ipse reliquit opes--
Sponte sua carmen numeros veniebat ad aptos,
Et quod conabar scribere, versus erat_.
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