PARALLELS. Macaulay's Hist. of England (1st ed.), ii. 476: But the iron stoicism of William never gave way: and he stood among his weeping friends calm and austere, as if he had been about to leave them only for a short visit to his hunting-grounds at Loo. . . . non alitèr tamen Et populum reditus morantem, Tendens Venafranos in agros, Aut Lacedæmonium Tarentum. Hor. Od. iii. v. 50-56. Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration, but no rest.—Bacon, Essay 20, "Of Empire." Kings are like stars-they rise and set-they have The worship of the world, but no repose. Shelley, Hellas. How when the Fancy, lab'ring for a birth, Some little hints at length like sparks break thence, With nought of mark to be discover'd by, "Some New Pieces" in Oldham's Works, pp. 126-27, 1684. Dryden, alluding 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 Rival Ladies, 1664. Lord Byron's appropriation of the same idea :— As yet 'tis but a chaos Of darkly brooding thoughts: my fancy is Doge of Venice There is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest change from rich to naked, from cieled roofs to arched coffins, from living like gods to die like men.―Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying, chap. i. sect. 1, p. 272, ed. Edin. Here's an acre sown indeed F. BEAUMONT. Coleridge. The Nightingale. A conversation poem. The nightingale— 'Most musical, most melancholy' bird! A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, he, and such as he, First named these notes a melancholy strain. Plato Phædo, § 77 (p. 85, Steph.) : Men, because they fear death themselves, slander the swans, and say that they sing from pain lamenting their death, and do not consider that no bird sings when hungry, or cold, or suffering any other pain; no, not even the nightingale, and the swallow, and the hoopoe, which you know are said to sing for grief, &c. Campbell's famous line, Like angels visits, few and far between, has been clearly shown by a correspondent in another paper, to be all but copied from Blair : like an ill-used ghost Not to return;—or if it did, its visits, Like those of angels, short and far between. Blair's Grave. But the same phrase, though put differently, occurs in a religious poem of Norris, of Bemerton, who died in 1711 : But those who soonest take their flight, Are the most exquisite and strong, Like angels visits, short and bright, Mortality's too weak to bear them long. In Norris's Miscellanies, in a poem "To the Memory of my dear Neece, M. C." (Stanza A, p. 10, ed. 1692), are the following lines: No wonder such a noble mind Her way to heaven so soon could find: There is a strange inclination to attribute similarity of sentiment to plagiarism; as if it were almost impossible for two men of genius to hit upon the same notions, independently of each other. In Propertius (II. i. 3, 4), we find : Non hæc Calliope, non hæc mihi cantat Apollo, 16* In Burns we read: O, were I on Parnassus' hill ! To sing how dear I love thee. My Muse maun be thy bonnie sel'. Had Burns been much of a Latin scholar, he would probably have been accused of stealing from Propertius. Again, few persons are unacquainted with Burns's lines- An' then she made, &c. In an old play, Cupid's Whirligig (4to. 1607), we read :— Man was made when Nature was but an apprentice, but woman when she was a skilful mistress of her art. Pliny, in his Natural History, has the pretty notion thatNature, in learning to form a lily, turned out a convolvulus. LIFTING EXPERIMENT. A living man, lying on a bench, extended as a corpse, can be lifted with ease by the forefingers of two persons standing on each side, provided the lifters inhale at the moment the effort is being made. This curious fact was recorded by Pepys, who, in his Diary, under the date 31st July, 1665 (vol. iii. p. 60), writes as follows: This evening with Mr. Brisband, speaking of enchantments and spells, I telling him some of my charmes; he told me this of his own knowledge, at Bourdeaux, in France. The words were these: "Voyci un Corps mort. Royde come un Baston, Froid comme Martre, Leger come un Esprit, Levons te au nom de Jesus Christ." He saw four little girls, very young ones, all kneeling each of them, upon one knee; and one begun the first line, whispering in the eare of the next, and the second to the third, and the third to the fourth, and she to the first. Then the first begun the second line, and so round quite through; and putting each one finger only to a boy that lay flat upon his back on the ground, as if he was dead: at the end of the words, they did with their four fingers raise this boy as high as they could reach. And Mr. Brisband, being there, and wondering at it, as also being afraid to see it, for they would have had him to have bore a part in saying the words, in the room of one of the little girls that was so young that they could hardly make her learn to repeat the words, did, for fear there might be same slight used in it by the boy, or that the boy might be light, call the cook of the house, a very lusty fellow, as Sir G. Carteret's cook, who is very big: and they did raise him just in the same manner. This is one of the strangest things I ever heard, but he tells it me of his own knowledge, and I do heartily believe it to be true. I inquired of him whether they were Protestant or Catholique girles; and he told me they were Protestant, which made it the more strange to me. In illustration of this passage, Lord Braybrooke adds, at vol. v. p. 245, the following note, which we insert, as it serves to bring before our readers evidence of this, at present, inexplicable fact on the authority of one of the most accomplished philosophers of our day :— The secret is now well known, and is described by Sir David Brewster, in his Natural Magic, p. 256. One of the most remarkable and inexplicable experiments relative to the strength of the human frame is that in which a heavy man is raised up the instant that his own lungs, and those of the persons who raise him, are inflated with air. This experiment was, I believe, first shown in England a few years ago by Major H., who saw it performed in a large party at Venice, under the direction of an officer of the American navy. As Major H. performed it more than once in my presence, I shall describe as nearly as possible the method which he prescribed. The heaviest person in the company lies down upon two chairs, his legs being supported by the one, and his back by the other. Four persons, one at eash leg, and one at each shoulder, then try to raise him; and they find his dead weight to be very great, from the difficulty they experience in supporting him. When he is replaced in the chair, each of the four persons take hold of the body as before; and the person to be lifted gives two signals, by clapping his hands. |