Hazlitt says this is an admirable simile, and Jeffrey deems it somewhat fantastical; but whether admirable or fantastical, or neither, certain it is that, so far as Campbell is concerned, it is not original. Two hundred years ago, Cowley, in his "Hymn to Light," compared darkness to an old negro, and light, its offspring, to a fair child. He is addressing the Light:

"First-born of Chaos! who so fair didst come

From the old negro's darksome womb;

Which, when it saw the lovely child,

The melancholy mass put on kind looks and smiled.”

Yalden, too, has borrowed this from Cowley :

"Parent of day, whose beauteous beams of light
Spring from the darksome womb of night,
And midst their native horrors show,

Like gems adorning of the negro's brow."

To these instances may be added the line in the "Soldier's Dream:"_

"And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;"

which has been adopted from Lee's "Theodosius:"

“The stars, Heaven's sentry, wink and seem to die."

R. Montgomery has the same image in his "Omnipresence of the Deity:"

"Ye quenchless stars, so eloquently bright,
Untroubled sentries of the shadowy night."

And it occurs in this passage in De La Mennais

"All creatures praise God; the orb of day and the watchlights of the night hymn unto him their mysterious language."

Tennyson has some striking passages which must be reckoned among unacknowledged appropriations. One of these is founded upon some remarkable lines in Keats's "Eve of St. Agnes," where that fine poet, with a delicacy and picturesqueness peculiarly his own, describes Madeline in the act of unrobing:

"Anon her heart revives; her vespers done,
Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;
Unclasps her warmed jewels, one by one,
Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees,
Half-hidden like a mermaid in sea-weed."

The whole of this inimitable sketch has been

adopted by Tennyson in his Legend of Gondiva :"

"Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there
Unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt,
The grim earl's gift; but ever at a breath
She linger'd, looking like a summer moon
Half-dipp'd in cloud; anon she shook her head
And shower'd the rippled ringlets to her knee."

Tennyson has also an appropriated passage in the "Gardener's Daughter:"

"We coursed about

The subject most at heart, more near and near,
Like doves about a dove-cot, wheeling round

The central wish, until we settled there."

This is taken from Dante's "Inferno:"

Quali colombe dal desio chiamate,

Con l' ali aperte a ferme al dolce nido

Vengon per aere da voler portate."

From the same source Tennyson has transferred to his "Locksley Hall" another beautiful thought:"

"This is the truth the poet sings,

That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier

things."

Dante's words are:

"Nessun maggior dolore,

Che ricordarsi del tempo felice

Nella miseria."

Tennyson has also a few borrowed thoughts from our elder poets. Shakspeare, in "Hamlet,” says:

"Lay her i' the earth,

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring."

And Tennyson, in " In Memoriam,'

""Tis well; 'tis something we may stand
Where he in English earth is laid;
And from his ashes may be made

The violet of his native land.”

The original thought, however, has been traced to Persius, who says in his first Satire :

"Nunc non e manibus illis,

Nunc non e tumulo fortunatâque favillâ
Nascentur viola."

Again, we have the lines in the "Miller's

Daughter:"

"And dews that would have fallen in tears

I kiss'd away before they fell;"

which have been taken from "Paradise Lost :".

"Two other precious drops that ready stood,

Each in their crystal sluice, he, ere they fell,

Kiss'd."

To these may be added the pretty line in the "Two Voices :"

"You scarce could see the grass for flowers;"

for which Tennyson is indebted to the dramatist George Peele :

"Ye may no see, for peeping flowers, the grasse."

I shall conclude these notices with some samples from Robert Montgomery, for the discovery of which we are indebted to Macaulay. I give them in that writer's words :

"We never fell in with any plunderer who so little understood how to turn his booty to good account as Mr. Montgomery. Lord Byron, in a passage which everybody knows by heart, has said, addressing the sea,

'Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow.'

Mr. Robert Montgomery very coolly appropriates the image, and reproduces the stolen goods in the following form:

'And thou vast ocean, on whose awful face

Time's iron feet can print no ruin-trace.'

A few more lines bring us to another instance of unprofitable

1

theft. Sir Walter Scott has these lines in the Lord of the

Isles:'

'The dew that on the violet lies

Mocks the dark lustre of thine eyes.'

Now for Mr. Montgomery :

'And the bright dew-bead on the bramble lies,
Like liquid rapture upon beauty's eyes.'"

To these examples Macaulay adds the couplet in the "Omnipresence of the Deity," which I have already quoted in speaking of the poet Campbell.

From the preceding remarks the reader will perceive that some of the best thoughts in our modern poets, and some of the most admired passages in their works, turn out, after all, to be little better than plagiarisms. It is in our prose writings, however, that the system is practised with the least scrupulosity. In some instances recourse is had to a slight change in the language, in order to disguise the theft; but, in general, all attempts at palliation are repudiated, and the writer proceeds, with the coolest effrontery, to appropriate not only the thoughts but the very words of the original. To furnish examples of all the "patchwork and plagiarism" which are resorted to in this way, for the manufacture of books, would be to transcribe into these pages a large proportion of the prose compositions of our time. One instance, however, it may be proper