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:

"Let us lament in sorrow sore,

For Kent Street well may say,

That, had she lived a twelvemonth more,
She had not died to-day."

In Goldsmith's "Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog," written in a similar strain of conceit, there is a stanza taken from "Monsieur La Palisse:"

"Bien instruit dès le berceau,

Jamais, tant il fut honnête,
Il ne mettait son chapeau,
Qu'il ne se couvrit la tête."
"A kind and gentle heart he had,
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad,
When he put on his clothes."

Then we have

Purdon:

the epitaph on Edward

"Here lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed,
Who long was a bookseller's hack;

He led such a damnable life in this world,
I don't think he'll wish to come back."

Which Goldsmith has copied from this of the
Chevalier de Cailly :--

"Il est au bout de ses travaux,

Il a passé le Sieur Etienne;

En ce monde il eut tant de maux,
Qu'on ne croit pas qu'il revienne."

:

Pope too has imitated this in the Epitaph :

"Well then, poor G

lies underground,

So there's an end of honest Jack:

So little justice here he found,

'Tis ten to one he'll ne'er come back."

R

To these may be added the well-known lines in the "Hermit:"

"Man wants but little here below,

Nor wants that little long."

Which have their parallel in Young's fourth Night:

"Man wants but little, nor that little long."

It has been asserted that Goldsmith was indebted for his beautiful ballad of the "Hermit" to Percy's ballad of the "Friars of Orders Gray;" but the truth seems to be that Percy, not Goldsmith, was the borrower. Percy, while collecting his "Reliques," showed Goldsmith the manuscript of the old ballad of the "Gentle Herdsman," and from this Goldsmith took the hint of his "Hermit." Having finished his poem, Goldsmith, in his turn, read it to Percy, who took from it the plan of his "Friars of Orders Gray," adopting not only the style and incidents, but in many places the very words of Goldsmith's delightful little poem-all, in fact, but its inimitable simplicity and pathos. (See Boswell's "Life of Johnson.")

Dr. Young has a passage in which he describes

man as

'Midway from nothing to the Deity."

For this he is indebted to Pascal's remark:

"Qu'est-ce que l'homme dans la nature ? un néant à l'égard de l'infini; un tout à l'égard du néant; un milieu entre rien et tout."