Compare, too, The Excursion, bk. iv.—
"I have seen
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell,
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intently," etc.
Landor, in his Satire upon Satirists, 1836, p. 29, commenting on Wordsworth's alleged remark that he "would not give five shillings for all the poetry that Southey had written" (see Letters, 1900, iv. Appendix IX. pp. 483, 484), calls attention to this unacknowledged borrowing, "It would have been honester," he says, "and more decorous if the writer of the following verses had mentioned from what bar he drew his wire." According to H. C. Robinson (Diary, 1869, iii. 114), Wordsworth acknowledged no obligation to Landor's Gebir for the image of the sea-shell. "From his childhood the shell was familiar to him, etc. The 'Satire' seemed to give Wordsworth little annoyance.">[
[395] {615}[In his Preface to Cantos I., II. of Childe Harold (Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 5), Byron relies on the authority of "Ariosto Thomson and Beattie" for the inclusion of droll or satirical "variations" in a serious poem. Nevertheless, Dallas prevailed on him to omit certain "ludicrous stanzas." It is to be regretted that no one suggested the excision of sections xix.-xxi. from the second canto of The Island.]
[396] Hobbes, the father of Locke's and other philosophy, was an inveterate smoker,—even to pipes beyond computation.