Readers of Don Juan sometimes descant with rapture on the beauty of the lines (c. i. v. 123),— 'Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home, The epithet deep-mouthed, as applied to the bark, being especially designated as "fine." And fine it is, but BYRON found it in SHAKSPEARE and in GOLDSMITH: And couple Clowder with the deep-mouthed brach. Taming of the Shrew, Induc. Sc. 1. The laborers of the day were all retired to rest; the lights were out in every cottage; no sounds were heard but of the shrilling cock, and the deep-mouthed watch-dog at hollow distance. Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xxii. "Your sermon," said a great critic to a great preacher, "was very fine; but had it been only half the length, it would have produced twice the impression." "You are quite right," was the reply; "but the fact is, I received but sudden notice to preach, and therefore I had not the time to make my sermon short." VOLTAIRE apologized for writing a long letter on the ground that he had not time to condense. In these cases the idea is borrowed from classical literature. PLINY says in his Letters (lib. i. ep. xx.) :— Ex his apparet illum permulta dixisse; quum ederet, omisisse; ... ne dubitare possimus, quæ per plures dies, ut necesse erat, latius dixerit, postea recisa ac purgata in unum librum, grandem quidem, unum tamen, coarctasse. (From this it is evident that he said very much; but, when he was publishing, he omitted much; . . . so that we may not doubt that what he said more diffusely, as he was at the time forced to do, having afterwards retrenched and corrected, he condensed into one single book.) The condensation and revision required more time and thought than the first production. CAMPBELL says in O'Connor's Child,— For man's neglect we loved it more. And again, Lines on leaving a Scene in Bavaria,- And WALTER SCOTT likewise imitates himself thus: His grasp, as hard as glove of mail, Forced the red blood drop from the nail. Rokeby. Canto i. He wrung the Earl's hand with such frantic earnestness, that his grasp forced the blood to start under the nail.-Legend of Montrose. In Rob Roy, Sir Walter makes Frank Osbaldistone say in his elegy on Edward the Black Prince, O for the voice of that wild horn, On Fontarabian echoes borne, The dying hero's call, That told imperial Charlemagne, How Paynim sons of swarthy Spain Had wrought his champion's fall. And in Marmion, toward the close of Canto Sixth, he says: O for a blast of that dread horn, On Fontarabian echoes borne, That to King Charles did come, On Roncesvalles died. When this inadvertent or unconscious coincidence in the poem and the novel was pointed out to Sir Walter, he replied, with his natural expression of comic gravity, "Ah! that was very careless of me. I did not think I should have committed such a blunder." "I tread on the pride of Plato," said Diogenes, as he walked over Plato's carpet. "Yes, and with more pride," said Plato.-CECIL, Remains. Trampling on Plato's pride, with greater pride, As did the Cynic on some like occasion, &c. BYRON, Don Juan, xvi. 43. Diogenes I hold to be the most vainglorious man of his time, and more ambitious in refusing all honors than Alexander in rejecting none. BROWNE, Religio Medici. There is an Italian proverb used, in the extravagance of flattery, to compliment a handsome lady, expressive of this idea:-"When nature made thee, she broke the mould." BYRON uses it in the closing lines of his monody on the death of Sheridan : Sighing that Nature formed but one such man, And broke the die,-in moulding Sheridan. SHAKSPEARE also says, in the second stanza of Venus and Adonis, Nature that made thee, with herself at strife, Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas. (From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but a step.) This saying, commonly ascribed to NAPOLEON, was borrowed by him from TOM PAINE, whose works were translated into French in 1791, and who says,— The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again. Tom Paine, in turn, adopted the idea from HUGH BLAIR, who says, in one place,— It is indeed extremely difficult to hit the precise point where true wit ends and buffoonery begins. In another, It frequently happens that where the second line is sublime, the third, in which he meant to rise still higher, is perfect bombast. Finally, BLAIR borrowed the saying from LONGINUS, a celebrated Greek critic and rhetorical writer, who, in a Treatise On the Sublime, uses the same expression, with this slight modification, that he makes the transition a gradual one, while Blair, Paine, and Napoleon make it but a step.* A curious instance of bathos occurs in Dr. Mavor's account of Cook's voyages:-"The wild rocks raised their lofty summits till they were lost in the clouds, and the valleys lay covered with everlasting snow. Not a tree was to be seen, nor even a shrub big enough to make a tooth-pick." Evil communications corrupt good manners.-1 Cor. xv. 33. Φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρησθ' ὁμιλίαι κακαί.-MENANDER. Bonos corrumpunt mores congressus mali.-TERTULLIAN: Ad Uxorem. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.-Eccl. i. 18. From ignorance our comfort flows, The only wretched are the wise.-PRIOR. Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.-GRAY: Ode to Eton. A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.-POPE: On Criticism. A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.-BACON: On Atheism. In Paradise Lost, Book V. 601, we find the expressionThrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers; and in Book I. 261, this powerful passage put in the mouth of Satan : Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell; In STAFFORD'S Niobe, printed when Milton was in his cradle, (1611,) is the following: True it is, sir, (said the Devil,) that I, storming at the name of supremacy, sought to depose my Creator; which the watchful, all-seeing eye of Providence finding, degraded me of my angelic dignities-dispossessed me of all pleasures; and the seraphs and cherubs, the Throne, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Princedoms, Arch Angels, and all the Celestial Hierarchy, with a shout of applause, sung my departure out of Heaven. My alleluia was turned into an eheu. Now, forasmuch as I was an Angel of Light, it was the will of Wisdom to confine me to Darkness and make me Prince thereof. So that I, that could not obey in Heaven, might command in Hell; and, believe me, I had rather rule within my dark domain than to re-inhabit Cœlum empyream, and there live in subjection under check, a slave of the Most High. Cæsar said he would rather be the first man in a village than the second man in Rome. A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.-GARRICK. I would help others out of a fellow-feeling.-BURTON: Anat. of Mel And learn the luxury of doing good.-GOLDSMITH: Traveller. The cups that cheer but not inebriate.-CowPER: Winter Evening. Tar water is of a nature so mild and benign, and proportioned to the human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer but not inebriate. -BISHOP BERKELEY: Siris. The dome of thought, the palace of the soul.-BYRON: Childe Harold. Tea does our fancy aid, Repress those vapors which the head invade, And keeps the palace of the soul.-WALLER: On Tea. None knew thee but to love thee.-HALLECK: On Drake. Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine POPE: Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.-GRAY: Elegy. And pilgrim, newly on his road, with love Thrills, if he hear the vesper bell from far, That seems to mourn for the expiring day.-DANTE, Cary's Trans. Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.-GRAY: Elegy. Yet in our ashen cold is fire yrecken.-CHAUcer. Ἐάσατ ̓ ἤδη γῇ καλυφθῆναι νεκρους, ὅθεν δ' ἕκαστον εἰς τὸ ζῆν ἀφίκετο ἐνταῦθ ̓ ἀπελθεῖν· ΠΝΕΥΜΑ μὲν πρὸς ̓ΑΙΘΕΡΑ To oopa d' eis THN,-EURIPIDES: Supplices. (Let the dead be concealed in the earth, whence each one came forth into being, to return thence again-the spirit to the SPIRIT'S SOURCE, but the body to the EARTH.) The resemblance between the above and the beautiful expression in the "Preacher's" homily is very remarkable:Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.-Eccles. xii. 7. (Things of a day! dream of a shadow.) Επάμεροι, τί δέ τις; τί δ' οὗ τις ; Σκιᾶς ὄναρ ἄνθρωποι.-PINDAR. What is any one? What is he not? Men are the Man's life is but a dream-nay, less than so, A shadow of a dream.-SIR JOHN DAVIES. |