This is shown to have been taken from the following passage in one of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's "Letters," where she speaks of the Coalition Ministry of 1757 : "Your account of the changes in ministerial affairs does not surprise me; but nothing could be more astonishing than their all coming in together. It puts me in mind of a friend of mine who had a large family of favourite animals; and, not knowing how to convey them to his country-house in separate equipages, he ordered a Dutch mastiff, a cat and her kittens, a monkey and a parrot, all to be packed up together in one large hamper, and sent by a waggon. One may easily guess how this set of company made their journey; and I have never been able to think of the present compound ministry without the idea of barking, scratching, and screaming." Lord Byron draws from every available source. Mrs. Radcliffe's " Mysteries of Udolpho" furnishes an instance, where she describes the appearance of Venice: "Its terraces crowded with airy yet majestic fabrics, touched as they now were with the splendour of the setting sun, appeared as if they had been called up from the ocean by the wand of an enchanter." A copy of the simile at the close will be found in the opening stanzas of the fourth Canto of "Childe Harold:❞— "I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, I saw from out the wave her structures rise Lastly, we have the passage in the "Doge of Venice:". "As yet 'tis but a chaos Of darkly-brooding thoughts; my fancy is For the selection of the pausing judgment.” Which Byron has copied from Dryden's Dedication to the "Rival Ladies," where he says of the progress of the work : "When it was only a confused mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished, and there either to be chosen or rejected by the judgment." Shelley, who had so much to lend, did not disdain to borrow. Among the few things of this kind to be met with in his poems are these lines in his little piece on "Mutability." "Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; The first is taken from these in Dryden :- or, as Cowper expresses it : "The world upon which we close our eyes at night, is never the same with that on which we open them in the morning." The second is also a borrowed line, and may be traced, through several poets, from Ovid downwards. The first English writer who appears to have adopted the thought is the Earl of Surrey, in this passage: "Short is th' uncertain reign of pomp and mortal pride: New turns and changes every day Are of inconstant chance the constant arts." Cowley has it in the lines: "The world's a scene of changes, and to be And Rochester in the couplet : "Since 'tis Nature's law to change, Constancy alone is strange." The sentiment also occurs in the French poets: Malherbe has pithily expressed it in one of his "Odes:" "Et rien, afin que tout dure, Ne dure éternellement." And J.-B. Rousseau beautifully in the lines: "Le Temps, cette image mobile De l'immobile Eternité." Casimir, the Polish poet, has the same thought in the couplet: "To give the sex their due, They scarcely are to their own wishes true ; They love, they hate, and yet they know not why: And in this passage in Alison's "History of Europe from Fall of Napoleon:" "Fickle in everything else, the French have been faithful in one thing only—their love of change." This antithesis could not escape the notice of La Rochefoucauld, who, in his 175th maxim, thus applies it to Love : "La constance en amour est une inconstance perpétuelle, qui fait que notre cœur s'attache successivement à toutes les qualités de la personne que nous aimons. Cette constance n'est qu'une inconstance arrêtée et renfermée dans un même sujet." Again, in "Hellas " Shelley has a couplet which is borrowed from Lord Bacon : Kings are like stars, they rise and set; they have The worship of the world, but no repose." Bacon's words are: "Princes are like the heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration but no rest.". Essay of Empire. Among our poetical plagiarists Thomas Campbell deserves a prominent place. His fine things, like those of Pope and Gray, have become familiar to us as "household words;" and, all the while, we seem unaware of the sources from which they are derived. "O'er the fair face so close a veil is thrown, That every borrow'd grace becomes his own." The first sample I have to notice occurs at the opening of the "Pleasures of Hope:"— "Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye, Garth has the same idea in the following couplet : "At distance prospects please us, but when near We find but desert rocks and fleeting air." And there is a passage in Collins's "Ode to the Passions," which ascribes to sound the effect attributed by Campbell to sight : “Pale Melancholy sat apart, And from her wild sequester'd seat, In notes by distance made more sweet, Pour'd thro' the mellow horn her pensive soul." The passage in Campbell, however, seems to have been appropriated from these lines in Otway's "Venice Preserved:" "A goodly prospect, tempting to the view; Another of Campbell's borrowings is this couplet in the "Pleasures of Hope:" "When front to front the banner'd hosts combine, Halt ere they close, and form the dreadful line;' which is taken from Pope's " Battle of Frogs and Mice: "When front to front the marching armies shine, Halt ere they meet, and form the lengthening line." |