Happy old man! then still thy farms restored, Enough for thee, shall bless thy frugal board. What tho' rough stones the naked soil o'erspread, Or marshy bulrush rear its wat'ry head, No foreign food thy teeming ewes shall fear, No touch contagious spread its influence here. Happy old man! here 'mid th' accustom'd streams And sacred springs, you'll shun the scorching beams; While from yon willow-fence, thy picture's bound, The bees that suck their flow'ry stores around, Shall sweetly mingle with the whispering boughs Their lulling murmurs, and invite repose: While from steep rocks the pruner's song is heard; Nor the soft-cooing dove, thy fav'rite bird, Meanwhile shall cease to breathe her melting strain, Nor turtles from th' aërial elm to 'plain. WARTON. It may be observed, that these two poems were produced by events that really happened; and may, therefore, be of use to prove, that we can always feel more than we can imagine, and that the most artful fiction must give way to truth. 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 to 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.