ABSTRACT
For where versifiers are notoriously defective as to their creative powers, where they are themselves fond of proclaiming their own borrowings, there any party of theirs, which has a real Affinity to any thing to be met with in a preceding Work, is justly liable to the suspicion of being thence derived, consequently of being unoriginal. We have two Poets of this Stamp, who have been very open in their borrowings and Imitations. These are Ben Johnson and Pope: whom we may look upon as plunderers of Parnassus:
If we regard them in this view, though they seem to have been pretty much alike in the surliness of their tempers, and to have valued themselves both upon their learning and scholarship, yet there will however appear some difference between them. Johnson’s writings are one continued series of Imitation and allusion: where he not only literally translates the antients, many passages from whom are transfused into his performances, and chime in as regular and as if they were the product of his own invention; but he gleans as freely, and without reserve, from the moderns when they make for his purpose. Thus for instance in his Epithalamion, it is plain he has derived the manner and part of the matter also from Catullus and Spenser, from the latter of whom he has inserted a distick almost totidem verbis2 without having given the least hint of it. Again he is particularly
By their particular names. Aut. it is not so. I us’d no name. My bookes have still been taught To spare the persons, and to speak the vices. [Poet., Epilogue, ll. 81-5]
What an exact translation is the two last lines of these in Martial! Hunc novere modum nostri servare libelli
In a word, such a one was Johnson, that he seems to have made it his study to cull out others sentiments, and to place them in his works as from his own mint. This surely is an odd species of improvement from reading, and savours very little of Invention or Genius: It borders nearly upon, if it is not really plagiarism. For according to Thomasius-Qui fatetur per quem profecerit, reddit mutuum, qui non fatetur fur est.5 The only difference between the borrower and actual plagiary is but this-the one acknowledges, the other conceals his obligations. In this respect Johnson’s character and Pope’s seem to tally: but Johnson’s is different from his in another respect, and that is in his every where abounding with allusions, which is a genteeler species of borrowing. One or two will serve as specimen. In the Alchemist, Act 1. Sc. 2. Face is persuading Dapper, at all events, to see the Queen of Faerie:
It will be somewhat hard to compasse: but However see her. You are made, believe it, If you can see her. Her Grace is a lone woman And very rich, and if she take a phantsye She will do strange things. See her at any hand. ’Slid she may chance to leave you all she has! [1.2.153-8]
He alludes here to a vulgar notion prevalent in his own time, but forgotten now. I have heard it often, says Sir John Harington,6 among the simpler sort, that he that can please the Queene of Faeries shall never want while he lives. In the next Scene Face says to Drugger —no gold about thee?
