BORROWED THOUGHTS.
Crenius wrote a dissertation De Furibus Librariis, and J. Conrad Schwarz another De Plagio Literario, in which some curious appropriations are pointed out; your pages have already contained some additional recent instances. The writers thus pillaged might exclaim, "Pereant iste qui post nos nostra dixerunt." Two or three instances have occurred to me which, I think, have not been noticed. Goldsmith's Madame Blaize is known to be a free version of La fameuse La Galisse. His well-known epigram,—
"Here lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed,"
is borrowed from the following by the Chevalier de Cailly (or d'Aceilly, as he writes himself) entitled,—
"La Mort du Sieur Etienne.
"Il est au bout de ses travaux,
Il a passé le Sieur Etienne;
En ce monde il eut tant des maux,
Qu'on ne croit pas qu'il revienne."
Another well-know epigram,—
"I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,"
is merely a version of the 33d epigram of the first books of those by the witty Roger de Bussy, Comte de Rabutin:—
"Je ne vous aime pas, Hylas,
Je n'en saurois dire la cause,
Je sais seulement une chose;
C'est que je ne vous aime pas."
Lastly, Prior's epitaph on himself has its prototype in one long previously written by or for one John Carnegie:—
"Johnnie Carnegie lais heer,
Descendit of Adam and Eve,
Gif ony con gang hieher,
I'se willing gie him leve."
S.W. SINGER