Oct. 14. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



311 



been stealing from so-and-so," but they say, 

 " This passage looks uncommon like that passage, 

 eh ? don't yori think so ? " and they shake their 

 head and pass on, leaving the impression of the 

 author's guilt to fix itself into the mind of every 

 listener or observer. Now this is not fair ; down- 

 right plagiarism is so disgraceful a crime that a 

 man ougb.t not to be lightly accused of it. A pla- 

 giarism ought, strictly speaking, only to be so 

 called either when an author has handled a sub- 

 ject in the identical way in which some previous 

 author has treated it, and when a succession of 

 the same ideas is to be found in both ; or, when 

 one peculiar turn. of thought correspondingly ex- 

 pressed, is to be found in two authors. To make 

 my meaning clearer, I will give you a specimen of 

 what is a plagiarism and what is not. 



Moore, in one of his Irish melodies, has the fol- 

 lov/ing : 



" I said (while 



The moon's smile 

 Play'd o'er a stream, in dimpling bliss) 



The moon looks 



On many brooks, 

 The brook can see no moon but this." 



This is a plagiarism, and Moore himself acknow- 

 ledges it, and tells us in a foot-note that this 

 iniiige was " suggested " by the following thought, 

 Avhich occurs somewhere in Sir William Jones's 

 ■work : 



" The moon looks upon many night-flowers, the night- 

 flower sees but one moon." 



Suggested, indeed! Moore might just as well 

 have said that it was taken from Sir William 

 Jones's works bodily, and without any alteration 

 of importance. Moore's confession, however, does 

 not make this the less a plagiarism ; a poet has no 

 business to go about versifying other people's 

 ideas. Moore was too fond of doing so ; indeed, 

 he is the least original poet in the English lan- 

 guage. But let this be parenthetical. 



In the above quotation the very peculiar turn 

 of thought in .Jones's works is copied literally by 

 Moore. Whoever does this is a plagiarist. 



Now for a coincidence which is not a plagiarism. 



In Tennyson's poem of the " Lady Clara Vere 

 de Vere " occur the following lines : 



" Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 

 'Tis only noble to be good." 



In tlie ballad of " Winifreda," in Percy's Reliques, 

 we find — 



" We'll shine in more substantial honours, 

 And to be noble we'll be good." 



I don't know whether this accidental resemblance 

 has ever been noticed before, but that it is acci- 

 dental I fully believe. The idea of goodness and 

 wortli being the only true nobility, must have 

 originated when it was first discovered that rank 

 and villany were not incompatible. When that 

 discovery was made I leave to keener explorers 



into old world history than myself to decide. But 

 in a variety of shapes the same sentiment has been 

 difiFerently expressed by English poets. Pope's 

 line — 



" An honest man's the noblest work of God," 



is merely this same thought in a different dress ; 

 which else is the idea in 13 urns' song, of which the 

 chorus is — 



" The rank is but the guinea stamp. 

 The man's the gowd for a' that ? " 



The sentiment being common property, it is 

 merely curious to observe tliat Mr. Tennyson and 

 the old ballad author express it with the same 

 epigrammatic terseness — as a singular coinci- 

 dence it is worth noting — for perhaps Mr. Ten- 

 nyson himself may never have had it pointed out 

 to him before ; but no person surely could be 

 found to charge him with plagiarism on account 

 of it ; and yet it is a closer imitation in terms than 

 any of your correspondents have pointed out. 



Lucknow. 



Mr. Dymond's quotation (Vol. ix., p. 425.) 

 from the traveller's book at the Raven, at Zurich, 

 of the distich written by Longfellow on the 

 Raven, bears a very suspicious resemblance to the 

 lines attributed to Quin, and I believe also to 

 Jekyll : 



" The famous inn at Speenhamland, 

 That stands below the hill, 

 May well be call'd the ' Pelican,' 

 Prom its enormous bill." 



J. H. L. 



SONNET BT BLANCO WHITE, ETC. 



(Vol. ix., pp. 469. 552.) 



Agreeably with the suggestion in your motto, I 

 have made a Note, in consequence of having just 

 found that the leading thought in that very strik- 

 ing sonnet from Blanco White, with which you 

 recently treated your readers, occurs in Bacon's 

 treatise De Augm. Scientiarum, lib. i., where he 

 says: 



"Scitissime dixit quidam Platonicus : * Sensus humanos 

 soleni referre, qui quidem revelat terrestrem globum, coe- 

 lestem vero et Stellas obsignat ; ' sic sensus reserant na- 

 turalia, divina occludunt. Atque hinc evenit, nonnullos 

 e doctiorum manipulo in hisresin lapsos esse, quum 

 ceratis sensuum alls innixi, ad divina evolare contende- 

 rent." 



Bacon's poi-tion of this passage exhibits a cha- 

 racteristic specimen of that poetical vein by which 

 his style is as generally marked as by the pro- 

 fundity of his philosophy. 



Let Bacon's name introduce another Note. He 

 had just been named by Guizot, in the introduc- 

 tion to his Histoire de la Civilisation en France^ 



