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'Read some of the Odes of Collins think them superior to Grays [...] I cannot describe the pleasure I feel in reading them [...] I find in the same Vol Odes by a poet of the name of Oglivie [...] they appear to me to be bold intruders to claim company with Gray and Collins'.
'On Tuesday the 5th of July, I again visited Johnson. He told me he had looked into the poems of a pretty voluminous writer, Mr. (now Dr.) John Ogilvie, one of the Presbyterian ministers of Scotland, which had lately come out, but could find no thinking in them. Boswell. "Is there not imagination in them, Sir?" Johnson. "Why, Sir, there is in them what [italics] was [end italics] imagination, but it is no more imagination in [italics] him [end italics] than sound is sound in the echo. And his diction too is not his own. We have long ago seen [italics] white-robed innocence [end italics] and [italics] flower-bespangled meads[end italics]".'