I am, Sir, Your humble servant,
DUBIUS.
No. 95. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1753
----Dulcique animos novitate tenebo. OVID. Met. iv. 284.
And with sweet novelty your soul detain.
IT is often charged upon writers, that with all their
pretensions to genius and discoveries, they do little
more than copy one another; and that compositions
obtruded upon the world with the pomp of novelty,
contain only tedious repetitions of common sentiments,
or at best exhibit a transposition of known
images, and give a new appearance of truth only by
some slight difference of dress and decoration.
The allegation of resemblance between authors is
indisputably true; but the charge of plagiarism,
which is raised upon it, is not to be allowed with
equal readiness. A coincidence of sentiment may
easily happen without any communication, since
there are many occasions in which all reasonable men
will nearly think alike. Writers of all ages have had
the same sentiments, because they have in all ages
had the same objects of speculation; the interests and
passions, the virtues and vices of mankind, have been
diversified in different times, only by unessential and
casual varieties: and we must, therefore, expect in
the works of all those who attempt to describe them,
such a likeness as we find in the pictures of the same
person drawn in different periods of his life.
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