Lastly, we have the passage in the "Doge of

Venice:"

"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."

Which Byron has copied from Dryden's Dedication to the "Rival Ladies," where he says of the progress of the 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."

Shelley, who had so much to lend, did not disdain to borrow. Among the few things of this kind to be met with in his poems are these lines in his little piece on "Mutability."

"Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but mutability."

The first is taken from these in Dryden :

"Man is but man, inconstant still and various;
There's no To-morrow in him like To-day;"

or, as Cowper expresses it :

"The world upon which we close our eyes at night, is never the same with that on which we open them in the morning."

The second is also a borrowed line, and may be traced, through several poets, from Ovid

downwards. The first English writer who appears to have adopted the thought is the Earl of Surrey, in this passage:

"Short is th' uncertain reign of pomp and mortal pride : New turns and changes every day

Are of inconstant chance the constant arts."

Cowley has it in the lines:

"The world's a scene of changes, and to be
Constant in Nature were inconstancy."

And Rochester in the couplet :

"Since 'tis Nature's law to change,

Constancy alone is strange."

The sentiment also occurs in the French poets: Malherbe has pithily expressed it in one of his "Odes :"

And J.-B. Rousseau beautifully in the lines :

"Le Temps, cette image mobile

De l'immobile Eternité."

Casimir, the Polish poet, has the same thought in the couplet :

"Quod tibi largâ dedit Hora dextrâ

Hora furaci rapiet sinistrâ."

It occurs in the lines:

"To give the sex their due,

They scarcely are to their own wishes true;

They love, they hate, and yet they know not why:

Constant in nothing but inconstancy."

And in this passage in Alison's "History of Europe from Fall of Napoleon :"—

"Fickle in everything else, the French have been faithful in one thing only-their love of change."

This antithesis could not escape the notice of La Rochefoucauld, who, in his 175th maxim, thus applies it to Love :

"La constance en amour est une inconstance perpétuelle, qui fait que notre cœur s'attache successivement à toutes les qualités de la personne que nous aimons. Cette constance n'est qu'une inconstance arrêtée et renfermée dans un même sujet."

Again, in "Hellas" Shelley has a couplet which is borrowed from Lord Bacon:

Kings are like stars, they rise and set; they have

The worship of the world, but no repose."

Bacon's words are:

"Princes are like the heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration but no rest."Essay of Empire.

Among our poetical plagiarists Thomas Campbell deserves a prominent place. His fine things, like those of Pope and Gray, have become familiar to us as "household words;" and, all the while, we seem unaware of the sources from which they are derived.

"O'er the fair face so close a veil is thrown,

That every borrow'd grace becomes his own."

The first sample I have to notice occurs at the opening of the "Pleasures of Hope:"

"Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sun-bright summit mingles with the sky?
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue."

Garth has the same idea in the following couplet :

"At distance prospects please us, but when near

We find but desert rocks and fleeting air."

And there is a passage in Collins's "Ode to the Passions," which ascribes to sound the effect attributed by Campbell to sight :

"Pale Melancholy sat apart,

And from her wild sequester'd seat,

In notes by distance made more sweet,

Pour'd thro' the mellow horn her pensive soul.”

The passage in Campbell, however, seems to have been appropriated from these lines in Otway's "Venice Preserved:"

"A goodly prospect, tempting to the view;
The height delights us, and the mountain-top
Looks beautiful because 'tis nigh to heaven."

Another of Campbell's borrowings is this couplet in the " Pleasures of Hope:"

"When front to front the banner'd hosts combine, Halt ere they close, and form the dreadful line; which is taken from Pope's "Battle of Frogs and Mice:

"When front to front the marching armies shine,

Halt ere they meet, and form the lengthening line."

In the same poem we have the verse :

"The strings of Nature crack'd with agony;"

adopted from this passage in Shakspeare's "King Lear: "

"His grief grew puisant, and the strings of life

Began to crack."

The readers of Hazlitt will remember Campbell's noted plagiarism from Blair, the author of the "Grave." Blair has it :

"Its visits,

"Like those of angels, short and far between."

And Campbell, in the "Pleasures of Hope," echoes without acknowledgment

"Like angels' visits, few and far between."

It is now ascertained, however, that we are indebted for this beautiful image, neither to Campbell nor to Blair, but to Norris of Bemerton, who thus expresses it in one of his poems :

"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."

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It occurs also in a poem to the memory of his niece:

"No wonder such a noble mind

Her way to heaven so soon should find :
Angels, as 'tis but seldom they appear,
So neither do they make long stay;
They do but visit and away.