Many of the historical proverbs have a doubtful paternity. Columbus's egg is claimed for Brunelleschi. Rabelais's dying words, "I am going to see the great Perhaps" (le grand Peut-être), only repeats the "IF" inscribed on the portal of the temple at Delphi. Goethe's favorite phrase, "the open secret," translates Aristotle's answer to Alexander, "These books are published and not published." Madame de Staël's "Architecture is frozen music" is borrowed from Goethe's "dumb music," which is Vitruvius's rule, that "the architect must not only understand drawing, but music." Wordsworth's hero acting "on the plan which pleased his childish thought," is Schiller's "Tell him to reverence the dreams of his youth," and earlier, Bacon's "Consilia juventutis plus divinitatis habent."
In romantic literature examples of this vamping abound. The fine verse in the old Scotch ballad of "The Drowned Lovers,"
"Thou art roaring ower loud, Clyde water,
Thy streams are ower strang;
Make me thy wrack when I come back,
But spare me when I gang,"
is a translation of Martial's epigram on Hero and Leander, where the prayer of Leander is the same:—
"Parcite dum propero, mergite dum redeo."
Hafiz furnished Burns with the song of "John Barleycorn," and furnished Moore with the original of the piece,
"When in death I shall calm recline,