36 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 90. 



Animals of Scotlcmd. Sir John succeeded to the 

 family title and estates, as sixth baronet, on the 

 death of his elder borther, Sir James Dalyell, on 

 February 1, 1841. He had previously been ad- 

 vanced to the honours of knighthood, by patent 

 under the Great Seal, in the year 1836. He had 

 oeen for some time in infirm health, and died at 

 his residence, Great King Street, Edinburgh, on 

 May 17, 1851, in his seventy-fourth year. Dying 

 unmarried, he is succeeded by his younger brother, 

 now Sir William Cunningham Cavendish Dalyell, 

 of Binns, baronet, Commander R.N., lloyal Hos- 

 pital, Greenwich. Aberdeniensis. 



APPROPRIATION OF A THOUGHT — OLBHAM, BRYDEN, 

 AND BYRON. THE STATE OF MIND IN THE PRO- 

 GRESS or COMPOSITION. 



" How when the Fancy, labVing for a birth, 

 With unfelt Throws brings its rude issue forth : 

 How after, wlien iitiperfect, shapeless tliought 

 Is by the judgment into Fashion wrought. 

 When at first searcli I traverse o'er my mind. 

 Nought but a dark and empty void 1 find : 

 Some little hints at length like sparks break thence, 

 And glimmer ill g tlioughts just dnivning into serise : 

 Confus\l awhile the mixt ideas lie, 

 wall nought of mark to be discover'd hy, 

 Like colours undlstinguish'd in the night, 

 Till the dusk imnges, moved to the light. 

 Teach the discerning Faculty to choose 

 Which it hud best adopt and tihich refuse." 



" Some New Pieces " in Oldham's Works, 

 pp. 126-27., 1684. 



Dryden, ajluding to his 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." 

 — Dedication to the Hival Ladies. 



Lord Byron's appropriation of the same idea : 



" As yet 'tis but a chaos 



Of darkly brooding thoughts: my fancy is 

 In her first work, more nearly to the light 

 Holding the sleeping images of things 

 For the selection of the pausing judgment." 



Doge of Fenice. 



Had Oldham or Dryden the prior claim to the 

 thought ? Byron derived his plagiarism from 

 D'Israeli, " On the Literary Character " (vo'.. i. 

 p. 284., 1828), where Dryden's Dedication to Iiis 

 Rival Ladies is quoted, and not from the Dedica- 

 tion itself, as the Reifospective Review imagined 

 (vol.vii. p. 158.), " by levying contributions in the 

 most secret and lonely recesses of our literature." 



James Cornish. 



THE " EISELL CONTROVERSY. 



When Polonius proposed to use the players ac- 

 cording to their desert, Hamlet rebuked him with 

 " Much better man ! use every man after his 

 desert, and who shall 'scape whipping ? Use them 

 after your own honour and dignity ! " I do not 

 think it necessary to notice that which is merely 

 coarse and vulgar in an unprovoked attack upon 

 mj'self, feeling that I have no right to expect the 

 man who has no consideration for his own dignity 

 to think of mine. But when an attempt is made 

 to sow dissension between me and those whose 

 opinions I value, and whose characters I esteem, I 

 feel that in justice to myself and in satisfaction to 

 them, a (evr words are not out of place. 



Some few of your readers may have seen a 

 pamphlet in reply to Mr. Singer, on the meaning 

 oteisell; and from certain insinuations about " pegs 

 and wires," and a "literary coterie," it might be 

 supposed that tliere existed some other bond for 

 the support of "Notes and Queries" than a 

 common object affords. I wish then to inform 

 such of them as may not happen to belong to the 

 " coterie " in question (which I suppose exists 

 somewhere — perhaps holds a sort of witch's-sab- 

 bath on some inaccessible peak in the pamphleteer's 

 imagination), that 1 have never, to my knowledge, 

 even seen either Mr. Singer or the editor of 

 "Notes and Queries;" and that, so far from 

 meaning offence to the angry gentleman who 

 seems disposed to run-a-muck against all who 

 come in his way, I actually supposed all meant in 

 good pai t, and characterised his remarks as " plea- 

 sant criticism." 



From an apparent inability, however, of this 

 pamphleteer to distinguish between pleasantry 

 and acrimony, he has attempted to fix on me 

 offences against others when I have ventured to 

 dissent from their conclusions. All I can say is, 

 that I have never written anything inconsistent 

 with the very high respect I leel for the abilities 

 and the great services rendered by the gentlemen 

 I have had occasion to allude to. 



Dire is the wrath of the pamphleteer that he 

 should have been charged by Mr. Singer with 

 "want of truth." That gentleman doubtless saw 

 what I did not, the implied insinuation — since 

 burst into full flower — about a "coterie." Yet 

 the candid controversialist, now, after due de- 

 liberation, insinuates that a "canon of criticism," 

 which I ventured to suggest, and at which he now 

 finds it convenient to sneer, was remembered for 

 the purpose of " bolstering up " Me. Singer's 

 " bad argument." So far from this being the case, 

 he knows that I used Me. Singer's argument — 

 at the close of, and apart from the main purpose 

 of my letter, to illustrate mine. So, in another 

 place, in the attempt to show up my " charming 

 and off-hand modesty," he quotes my opinion that 



