A CLEVER HOAX ON SIR WALTER SCOTT.
The following passage occurs in one of Sir Walter Scott’s letters to Southey, written in September, 1810:—
A witty rogue, the other day, who sent me a letter subscribed “Detector,” proved me guilty of stealing a passage from one of Vida’s Latin poems, which I had never seen or heard of; yet there was so strong a general resemblance as fairly to authorize “Detector’s” suspicion.
Lockhart remarks thereupon:—
The lines of Vida which “Detector” had enclosed to Scott, as the obvious original of the address to “Woman,” in Marmion, closing with—
“When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!”
end as follows: and it must be owned that if Vida had really written them, a more extraordinary example of casual coincidence could never have been pointed out.
“Cum dolor atque supercilio gravis imminet angor,
Fungeris angelico sola ministerio.”
“Detector’s” reference is Vida ad Eranen, El. ii. v. 21; but it is almost needless to add there are no such lines, and no piece bearing such a title in Vida’s works.
It was afterwards ascertained that the waggish author of this hoax was a Cambridge scholar named Drury.