—Can any of your readers inform me where the following anecdote is recorded? It bears the mark of authenticity, and if so adds, to the extraordinary gifts of the great moralist, that of prophecy; be it observed, however, that the prognostication is founded on a deduction of science. As the Doctor was one evening leaning out of the window of his house in Bolt Court, Fleet Street, he observed the parish lamplighter nimbly ascend a ladder for the purpose of lighting one of the old glimmering oil lamps which only served to make "darkness visible." The man had scarcely descended the ladder half way, when he discovered that the flame had expired; quickly returning he lifted the cover partially, and thrusting the end of his torch beneath it, the flame was instantly communicated to the wick by the thick vapour which issued from it.
"Ah!" exclaimed the Doctor, after a pause, and giving utterance to his thoughts, "Ah! one of these days the streets of London will be lighted by smoke!" It is needless to add that in the succeeding century the prediction was verified.
M. W. B.
Coleridge and Plato.
—Without becoming "a piddler in minute plagiarisms" (as Gifford called Warton), I think the following coincidence worth noting. S. T. Coleridge, in his "Lines on an Autumnal Evening," has these lines:
"On seraph wing I'd float a dream by night,
To soothe my love with shadows of delight;
Or soar aloft to be the spangled skies.
And gaze upon her with a thousand eyes."
Plato had written ("To Stella," in Anthol. Palat.):