depends, especially in the article of expreffion, is only to be had in the fame language. And you are not ta be told with how much more certainty we determine of the degree of evidence, which such identity affords for this purpose, in a language we speak, than in one which we only lifp or fpell.

But You will beft understand of what importance this affair of expreffion is to the discovery of imitations, by confidering how feldom we are able to fix an imitation on Shakespear. The reafon is, not, that there are not numberless passages in him very like to others in approved authors, or that he had not read enough to give us a fair hold of him; but that his expreffion is fo totally his own, that he almost alway, fets us at defiance.

You will afk me, perhaps, now I am on this fubject, how it happened that Shakespear's language is everywhere fo much his own as to fecure his imitations, if they were fuch, from discovery; when I pronounce with fuch affurance of thofe of our other poets. The answer is given for me in the Preface to Mr. Theobald's Shakespear; though the observation, I think, is too good to come from that critic. It is, that, though his words, agreeably to the ftate of the English tongue at that time, be generally Latin, his phrafeology is perfectly English: An advantage, he owed to his flender acquaintance with the Latin idiom. Whereas the other writers of his age, and fuch athers of an older date as were likely to fall into his hands, had not only the most familiar acquain

tance

tance with the Latin idiom, but affected on all accafions to make use of it. Hence it comes to pass, that, though he might draw sometimes from the Latin (Ben Johnson, you know, tells us, He had lefs Greek) and the learned English writers, he takes no thing but the fentiment; the expreffion comes of itself, and is purely English.

I might indulge in other reflections, and detain you ftill further with examples taken from his works. But we have lain, as the Poet fpeaks, on these primrofe beds, too long. It is time that you now rise to your own nobler inventions; and that I return myself to those, less pleafing, perhaps, but more useful ftudies from which your friendly follicitations have called me. Such as thefe amufements are, however, I cannot repent me of them, fince they have been innocent at least, and even ingenuous; and, what I am fondeft to recollect, have helped to enliven those many years of friendship we have pafs'd together in this place. I fee indeed, with regret, the approach of that time, which threatens to take me both from it, and you. But however fortune may difpofe of me, fhe cannot throw me to a distance, to which your affection and good wifhes, at leaft, will not follow me.

And for the reft,

"Be no unpleafing melancholly mine.

The

The coming years of my life will not, I forefee, in many refpects be what the past have been to me. But, till they take me from myself, I must always bear about me the agreeable remembrance of our friendship.

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