illustrating his views by a quotation from Demosthenes, he adds:

“ Τίνι γὰρ ἐνταῦθ ̓ ὁ ῥήτωρ ἀπέκρυψε τὸ σχῆμα ; δῆλον, ὅτι τῷ φωτὶ αὐτῷ.”

"In what has the orator here concealed the figure ? plainly, in its own lustre."

In this passage Longinus elucidates one figure by another; a not unfrequent practice with that elegant writer.

Lastly, we have the quatrain in Gray's "Ode to Adversity:"

Daughter of Jove, relentless power,

Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour

The bad affright, afflict the best."

For the third line of which he is indebted to this passage in "Paradise Lost:"_

66

When the scourge

Inexorably and the torturing hour

Calls us to penance."

If any work more than another might be expected to furnish information on the subject of plagiarism," it is D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Literature." Yet, although the subject is there introduced under the head of "Richesource and his Professorship," not a single example is adduced of so remarkable a "Curiosity." This is not a little surprising in a writer who appears to have bestowed so much industry and patience

on his other researches. True, we find farther on some twenty-five pages of "Imitations," and "Similarities;" but one half of these have no better claim to that distinction than the trivial coincidence of a single word or epithet; a claim which, if strictly enforced, would exhibit all the poetry in our language as made up of similarities. There are, however, three of the "Imitations " which deserve to be quoted.

The first occurs in Pope's "Prologue to the Satires," where, speaking of Dr. Arbuthnot, he says:

"Friend of my life (which did not you prolong,

The world had wanted many an idle song)."

The thought in the second line being adopted from this couplet in Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel :"

"David for him his tuneful harp had strung,

And Heaven had wanted one immortal song."

The second imitation refers to a couplet in Young:

"Of some for glory such the boundless rage,

That they're the blackest scandal of the age."

Which is taken from the following in Oldham's "Satire against Poetry:"

"On Butler who can think without just rage?
The glory and the scandal of the age."

The third imitation noticed by D'Israeli,

occurs in a couplet in Goldsmith's "Deserted Village :"

"Princes and lords may flourish or may fade;

A breath can make them, as a breath has made."

The second line of which he traces to a passage in De Caux, who, comparing the world to his hour-glass, says :

"C'est un verre qui luit,

Qu'un souffle peut détruire, et qu'un souffle a produit."

The following quatrain, commemorating the devastating effects of an earthquake in the valley of Lucerne, in 1808, offers a parallel :—

"O ciel! ainsi ta Providence

A tous les maux nous condamna;
Un souffle éteint notre existence,
Comme un souffle nous la donna."

And Pope has a couplet in which the same turn of thought is preserved :

"Who pants for glory finds but short repose;
A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows."

There is a plagiarism in Goldsmith which, I believe, was first pointed out by the "Athenæum' newspaper. It relates to this couplet in the "Haunch of Venison:"

"Such dainties to them their health it might hurt;

It's like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt.”

The second line of which belongs to the following passage in "Tom Brown:"

“ If your friend is in want, don't carry him to the tavern, where you treat yourself as well as him, and entail a thirst and headache upon him next morning. To treat a poor wretch with a bottle of Burgundy and fill his snuff-box, is like giving a pair of laced ruffles to a man that has never a shirt on his back. Put something in his pocket."

But the most remarkable plagiarism in Goldsmith is his "Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaze." That delightful poet tells us that during his pedestrian tour through France, he procured a subsistence by playing some of his most merry tunes on the German flute; and it is natural to suppose that the sprightly peasants whom he thus entertained, requited his skill by singing or reciting some of their popular songs. Among those most in vogue at that period was the "Chanson sur le fameux La Palisse," which is generally attributed to Bernard de la Monnoye. To such of my countrymen as may still retain any feeling of soreness on the score of "Malbrough s'en va-ten guerre,' it may be some consolation to know that before the latter facétie was composed on the renowned English captain, the French had already indulged their sarcastic playfulness at the expense of one of their own great captains, the famous La Palisse, "Grand Maréchal de France," the Marlborough of his age, and the friend and companion in arms of Francis the First. Some of

the stanzas in "Monsieur La Palisse" are pointless enough; but there are others pregnant with humour, and it is these which Goldsmith has appropriated. To facilitate a comparison, I shall give a stanza from each, alternately :

"On ne le vit jamais las

Ni sujet à la paresse ;·
Tandis qu'il ne dormait pas,

On tient qu'il veillait sans cesse."

"At church in silks and satins new,
With hoop of monstrous size,
She never slumber'd in her pew,
But when she shut her

eyes."

"On dit que dans ses amours
Il fut caressé des belles,
Qui le suivirent toujours,

Tant qu'il marcha devant elles."

"Her love was sought, I do aver,
By twenty beaux and more:
The king himself has follow'd her,
When she has walk'd before."

"Il fut par un triste sort

Blessé d'une main cruelle;
On croit, puisqu'il en est mort,
Que la plaie était mortelle."

"But now her wealth and finery fled,
Her hangers-on cut short all;

The doctors found when she was dead,
Her last disorder mortal."

"Il mourut le vendredi,

Le dernier jour de son âge;

S'il fut mort le samedi,

Il eut vecu davantage."