Tennyson, In Memoriam, xxvii.
5. Boileau, speaking of himself, when set in his youth to study the law, says that his family—
"... Palit, et vit en frémissant
Dans la poudre du greffe un poëte naissant."
While Pope, in his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, speaks of—
"Some clerk, foredoom'd his father's soul to cross,
Who pens a stanza when he should engross."
Harry Leroy Temple.
P.S.—At p. 123. of Vol. vi. are inserted some other parallels, noted by me in the course of my reading. For one of these so inserted, that relating
to Sylla, I was taken to task (see Vol. vi., p. 208.) by P. C. S. S. Now, the parallel between the two passages ("Parallel, resemblance, conformity continued through many particulars, likeness," Johnson's Dictionary) is this: Both verses endeavour to picture the mingled red and white of the "human face divine" (one satirically, the other eulogistically), by comparing their combined effect to that of the red hue of fruit seen through a partially superfused white medium—meal over mulberries, cream over strawberries. If there is not sufficient "resemblance" or "likeness" in the two (in the opinion of P. C. S. S.) to justify me in placing them alongside of one another (παράλληλα), I really cannot help it.