Thomson, in his "Castle of Indolence," has the line :

"As thick as idle motes in sunny ray;"

which has its parallel in Milton's "Il Penseroso:"

"As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sunbeams."

And Milton has taken the simile from this of Chaucer:

"As thick as motes in the sunne beams."

There is a well-known epigram in Pope :

"You beat your pate and fancy wit will come :
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home."

Which Cowper has adopted, in nearly the same words, in his poem on "Conversation:"_

"His wit invites you by his looks to come;
But when you knock, it never is at home."

The following sample is from the same poem :—

"The solemn fop, significant and budge,

A fool with judges, among fools a judge."

The sentiment, however, has so many parallels among the ancients, that it is uncertain from which of them Cowper has adopted it. Plato has it in the sentence:

« Ο δὲ Κριτιὰς

φιλοσόφοις, φιλόσοφος δὲ ἐν ἰδιώταις.”

ἐκαλεῖτο ἰδιώτης μὲν ἐν

It occurs in Seneca in the following form:

"Sparsum memini hominem, inter scholasticos insanum, inter sanos scholasticum."

Apuleius has it in the words :

"Inter doctos nobilissimus, inter nobiles doctissimus, inter utrosque optimus."

And St. Jerome, in his remarks on the Prætorian Prefect Dardanus, whom he describes

as,

"Christianorum nobilissime, nobilium christianissime."

To which may be added this of Sir Walter Scott:

"It was in this sphere that Napoleon was seen to greatest advantage; for, although too much of a soldier among sovereigns, no one could claim with better right to be a sovereign among soldiers."—Life of Napoleon.

A noted instance of this antithesis is Dr. Johnson's sarcastic application of it to Lord Chesterfield:

"This man, I thought, had been a lord among wits, but I find he is only a wit among lords."

The oft-quoted line in Cowper's "Task,”—

England, with all thy faults, I love thee still,"

is taken from this passage in Churchill's "Farewell :".

"Be England what she will,

With all her faults, she is my country still."

In his "Table Talk" Cowper has the couplet :

"That constellation set, the world in vain

Must hope to look upon their like again ;

which is adopted from the following in "Hamlet:".

"He was a man, take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again."

From "Hamlet," too, Churchill has borrowed the second line in this couplet:

"And the poor slattern muse is brought to bed,
With all her imperfections on her head."

Shakspeare's words are :—

"No reckoning made, but sent to my account,
With all my imperfections on my head."

"God made the country, and man made the town,” is supposed to have been adopted from this line in Cowley's "Garden :"

"God the first garden made, the first city Cain."

But the true source of it will be found in a passage in Varro's "De Re Rusticâ," where he says:

"Nec mirum quod divina natura dedit agros, ars humana ædificavit urbes."

The temptation of borrowing must be strong indeed, when we meet with such a poet as

Chatterton giving way to it, notwithstanding the still stronger inducement which should have deterred him from venturing on such forbidden ground. But so it is; and among the many reasons for rejecting the authenticity of the "Rowley Poems," not the least cogent is the occurrence therein of borrowed thoughts-borrowed from poets of a date posterior to that of their pretended origin. Of these I shall quote two or three instances. In the "Battle of Hastings" we read this couplet :

"The grey-goose pynion that thereon was sett,
Eftsoons wyth smokyng crymson bloud was wett."
This is taken from the ballad of
Chase:"-

"The grey-goose wing that was thereon

In his heart's blood was wet."

"Chevy

In the same poem Chatterton has the lines:"Edardus felle upon the bloudie grounde;

His noble soule came rushyng from the wounde."

The last of which, with "disdainful" instead of "noble," is the concluding line in Dryden's translation of Virgil:

“And the disdainful soul came rushing through the wound."

The same origin must be assigned to the following couplet in Sir Richard Blackmore; for, although Dryden's contemporary, Sir Richard

is more likely to have been the borrower on this occasion:

"A gloomy night o'erwhelms his dying eyes,

And his disdainful soul from his pale bosom flies."

There is a plagiarism in Chatterton which has escaped the notice of his numerous annotators, and which furnishes additional proof, if any were wanting, that the "Rowley Poems" are in reality the production of that "marvellous boy." It occurs at the commencement of the "Tournament," in the line,—

"The worlde bie diffraunce ys ynn orderr founde."

It will be seen that this line, a very remarkable one, has been cleverly condensed from a passage in Pope's "Windsor Forest :"—

"But as the world, harmoniously confused,

Where order in variety we see,

And where, though all things differ, all agree.”

This sentiment has been repeated by other modern writers. Pope himself has it in the "Essay on Man," in this form :

"The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife
Gives all the strength and colour of our life."

It occurs in one of Pascal's "Pensées :".

"J'écrirai ici mes pensées sans ordre, et non pas peut-être dans une confusion sans dessein. C'est le véritable ordre, et qui marquera toujours mon objet par le désordre même."