The question is stated simply: ‘How do human beings learn sophisticated usage of language from others, and yet end up sounding like themselves?’ The answer is long. It is unending, according to Ben Jonson (whose observation begins the enquiry).

Where, then, may we begin? The beginning is in antiquity. What has been written over the centuries, however original the perception and expression, is part of an ancient tradition. We write for the future while looking to the past. An obvious example is Shakespeare, who was rarely if ever the first to write on a theme. But he wrote in a manner that was his alone – until, of course, others followed.

We learn how to live by copying our mentors, filtering that mimesis through our personal approach. A good mimic may not be a good actor. To act or to write well is to be oneself even in another person’s voice.

Colin Burrows is guided in his enquiry by the Latin rhetorical device imitatio, a word with multiple meanings. The formal and the adaptive uses of imitatio seem the most relevant to modern (that is, post-Renaissance) usage. It is partly a question of style. Formal imitation absorbs the manner, including the vocabulary, of the original. The adaptive mode concerns what Dr Burrows calls ‘practical transformation’, meaning the absorption of certain authorial characteristics so that they become habitual to another writer.

This seems to differ from influence by the close relation between the existing model and its imitation. On the other ...