[107] Among the imputed plagiarisms so industriously hunted out in his writings, this line has been, with somewhat more plausibility than is frequent in such charges, included,—the lyric poet Lovelace having, it seems, written,
"The melody and music of her face."
Sir Thomas Brown, too, in his Religio Medici, says—"There is music even in beauty," &c. The coincidence, no doubt, is worth observing, and the task of "tracking" thus a favourite writer "in the snow (as Dryden expresses it) of others" is sometimes not unamusing; but to those who found upon such resemblances a general charge of plagiarism, we may apply what Sir Walter Scott says, in that most agreeable work, his Lives of the Novelists:—"It is a favourite theme of laborious dulness to trace such coincidences, because they appear to reduce genius of the higher order to the usual standard of humanity, and of course to bring the author nearer to a level with his critics."
[108] It will be seen, however, from a subsequent letter to Mr. Murray, that he himself was at first unaware of the peculiar felicity of this epithet; and it is therefore, probable, that, after all, the merit of the choice may have belonged to Mr. Gifford.
[109] Some doubt had been expressed by Mr. Murray as to the propriety of his putting the name of Cain into the mouth of a Mussulman.
[110] Mr. Canning's note was as follows:—"I received the books, and, among them, The Bride of Abydos. It is very, very beautiful. Lord Byron (when I met him, one day, at dinner at Mr. Ward's) was so kind as to promise to give me a copy of it. I mention this, not to save my purchase, but because I should be really flattered by the present."
[111] Penrose's Journal, a book published by Mr. Murray at this time.
[112] Mr. Murray had offered him a thousand guineas for the two poems.
[113] Penrose's Journal.
[114] His first intention had been to go out, as a settler, to Botany Bay.