Yet that he should have so suffered is a sufficient proof that his excellences were not of the highest order.

A line may be stolen; but the pervading spirit of a great poet is not to be surreptitiously obtained by a plagiarist.

The continued imitation of twenty-five centuries has left Homer as it found him.

If every simile and every turn of Dante had been copied ten thousand times, the Divine Comedy would have retained all its freshness.
It was easy for the porter in Farquhar to pass for Beau Clincher, by borrowing his lace and his pulvilio.

It would have been more difficult to enact Sir Harry Wildair.
Before I quit this subject I must defend Petrarch from one accusation which is in the present day frequently brought against him.