“Yes,” said the vicar, “in his thirty-second year. If he had lived, he would probably have been one of the foremost men in England to-day.”
“‘Whom the gods love, die young,’” quoted I grandiloquently, like Mawley.
“True,” said the vicar. “There is more philosophy in that, than in most of those old Pagan beliefs: there is a glimmering of Christianity about the saying.”
“I wonder,” said Miss Pimpernell, “whether there is any connection between it and the text, ‘Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth’?”
“I can’t say, my dear,” said the vicar, “if you are right in this instance; but there is often a great similarity between different parts of the Bible and the utterances of profane writers.”
“Have you ever noticed, sir,” said Min, “how David says in the Psalms that ‘all the foundations of the world are out of course;’ while Shakespeare makes Hamlet observe that ‘the world is out of joint’?”
“Yes,” said the vicar, “and there are many other parallels that could be drawn from Shakespeare. He was frequently indebted to the inspired volume for his reflections; whether wittingly or unknowingly, I cannot say.”
“I think,” said I, “that Douglas Jerrold’s celebrated bon mot about Australia must be put down to the same source. He said, if you remember, speaking of the prolific nature of the soil of the new continent, ‘Tickle her with a hoe, and she will laugh with a harvest;’ and in the Psalms we have the verse, ‘The valleys also shall stand so thick with corn, that they shall laugh and sing.’”
“It is debatable,” said the vicar, “whether we should ascribe these striking resemblances to unconscious plagiarism or to similarity of thought.”
“We will have to agree with Solomon,” said I, “that there is nothing new under the sun!”