[57]. Kidnapp’d Rhymes.—Kidnapp’d implies something more than stolen. It is, according to an expression of Mr. Sheridan’s (in the “Critic”), using other people’s “thoughts as gipsies do stolen children—disfiguring them, to make them pass for their own”.
This is a serious charge against an author, and ought to be well supported. To the proof then!
In an Ode of the late Lord Nugent’s are the following spirited lines:
“Though Cato liv’d—though Tully spoke—[[58]]
Though Brutus dealt the godlike stroke,
Yet perish’d fated Rome!”
The author above mentioned saw these lines, and liked them—as well he might; and as he had a mind to write about Rome himself, he did not scruple to enlist them into his service; but he thought it right to make a small alteration in their appearance, which he managed thus. Speaking of Rome, he says it is the place
“Where Cato liv’d”:—
A sober truth! which gets rid at once of all the poetry and spirit of the original, and reduces the sentiment from an example of manners, virtue, patriotism, from the vitæ exemplar dedit of Lord Nugent, to a mere question of inhabitancy. Ubi habitavit Cato—where he was an inhabitant-householder, paying scot and lot, and had a house on the right-hand side of the way, as you go down Esquiline Hill, just opposite to the poulterer’s. But to proceed—
“Where Cato liv’d; where Tully spoke,