GROT.
The age's miracle, his father's joy!
Nor old you would pronounce him, nor a boy. F. LEWIS.
And Prior was indebted for a pretty illustration to Alleyne's poetical
history of Henry the Seventh:
For nought but light itself, itself can shew,
And only kings can write, what kings can do. ALLEYNE.
Your musick's pow'r, your musick must disclose,
For what light is, 'tis only light that shews. PRIOR.
And with yet more certainty may the same writer be censured, for
endeavouring the clandestine appropriation of a thought which he
borrowed, surely without thinking himself disgraced, from an epigram of
Plato:
[Greek: Tae Paphiae to katoptron, epei toiae men orasthai
Ouk ethelo, oiae d' aen paros, ou dunamai.]
Venus, take my votive glass,
Since I am not what I was;
What from this day I shall be,
Venus, let me never see.
As not every instance of similitude can be considered as a proof of
imitation, so not every imitation ought to be stigmatized as plagiarism.
The adoption of a noble sentiment, or the insertion of a borrowed
ornament, may sometimes display so much judgment as will almost
compensate for invention: and an inferior genius may, without any
imputation of servility, pursue the path of the ancients, provided he
declines to tread in their footsteps.
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