by a great number of excellent authors, they have cultivated different departments of literature, prose or verse, or have adopted different styles of expression. This was the case in the Augustan age, as appears from the works of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, etc. This is also evident in later times; for in the writings of Shakespeare, Swift, Pope, Gray, Bolingbroke, Addison, Scott, Moore, Milton, and others, there are striking idiosyncrasies, and peculiarities of style.

These men were not, like most of their literary contemporaries, servile imitators, but original thinkers, and consequently, original writers.

:

Coleridge said, that plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from if this is so, the case of Madame de Genlis is rather anomalous. We will close our chapter with a few more instances of analogy in sentiment and verse. For example: Spenser compares the falling of Autumn foliage with the death

of man.

"As withered leaves drop from their dried stocks,

When the wroth western wind doth reave their locks."

The same idea is employed by Shelley,

"Thou wild west wind! thou breath of autumn's being,
Before whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing."

Milton embodies the same figure; and Byron also, in the well-remembered stanza:

"Like the leaves of the forest, when summer is green,

That host with its banners at sunset was seen;

Like the leaves of the forest, when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strewn."

Again, in Pope :

"Like leaves on the trees, the race of man is found:
They fall successive, and successive rise."

The following is a coincidence between Tennyson and Shakspeare:

"A dream

Dreamed by a happy man, while the dark east
Is slowly brightening to his bridal morn."

Tennyson.

"Then music is

As those dulcet sounds in break of day,
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear,
And summon him to marriage."

Merchant of Venice.

In the very fine stanza on a skull―(Childe Harold) Byron apostrophizes it as,

"The dome of thought and palace of the soul."

Waller in a short poem on tea, the effect of which he describes, calls the head the

"Palace of the soul."

Can we not trace Mason's "Gadding Ivy" to Milton's "Gadding Vine?" In the dramatic poem of "Elfrida," by the former, there is

"The ivy, gadding from th' untwisted stem,

Curtains each verdant side,"

And in Milton's "Lycidas" we read

"desert caves,

With wild thyme, and the gadding vine o'ergrown."

A coincidence of imagery is apparent in the following:

"But let my due feet never fail,

To walk the studious cloister's pale,
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full voic'd choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear,

As may with sweetness through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstacics."

Il Penseroso.

The other passage in "St. Agnes' Eve," where the beads

Northward he turneth through a little door,

And scarce three steps, ere Music's golden tongue
Flattered to tears this aged man-"

In a madrigal by Morley (1600) we have the following:

"April is my mistris face,

And July in her eyes hath place,
Within her bosom is September,

But in her heart a cold December."

and in Robert Greene's "Perimedes, the Blacksmith,” 1588— we find another rendering of the same idea:

"Fair is my love, for April in her face,

Her lovely breasts September claims his part,

And lordly July in her eies takes place,

But cold December dwelleth in her heart."

The following speak for themselves :

[Longfellow.]

"And like a lily on a river floating,
She floats upon the river of his thoughts."
Spanish Student, Act 2, Sc. 3.

[Tennyson.]

"Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake."

Princess, pt. 7.

There is a resemblance in the following lines from Wordsworth

and Keble.

"A book, upon whose leaves some chosen plants
By his own hand disposed with nicest care,
In undecaying beauty were preserved."

Excursion, bk. 6.

"Like flower-leaves in a precious volume stored
To solace and relieve

Some heart too weary of the restless world."

Christian Year.

Herrick, seems to have had the finest perception of the delicate and charming, in the following

"Her pretty feet,

Like smiles, did creep
A little out, and then,

As if they started at bo-peep,

Did soon draw in again."

It is the exquisite intimation of the lively character of the inward spirit, shown in the active movements of the feet, which Sir John Suckling has imitated in his ballad of the Wedding:

"Her feet beneath her petticoat
Like little mice stole in and out,

As if they feared the light;
But, oh, she dances such a way,
No sun upon an Easter day

Is half so fine a sight!"

The literary faux-pas of a once celebrated chemist, by his work on "Chemical Tests," is known to the scientific in both hemispheres. He published a work on Poisons, entitled, "Death in the Pot,” which at first bid fair to yield its author a moderately good revenue of fame and fortune, but for the discovery which was soon made, that it consisted of a series of pilfered pages, torn out of old books in the British Museum; he was tried upon a criminal suit for felony, and although formally acquitted, yet so strong was the circumstantial evidence of his guilt, that he was compelled to decamp. Among the liberal professions respectively-law, physic, and the

ology-many curious facts might also be cited; but about theology we must have little to say-of physic, less-and law, the least. Before speaking of the mysterious parallels which may be found to exist with the Biblical Commentaries of such divines as Dr. Adam Clarke, and his approved pioneer, Dr. John Gill, we subjoin the following extract from the Preface to Cobbin's Condensed Commentary:

"All the commentators have drawn largely from the Fathers, especially from St. Augustine; and most of them have made common property of Patrick, South and Whitby. Henry has made very free use with Bishop Hall and others, and Scott has again enriched himself abundantly from Henry; Poole exhausted the continental writers, while Gill, unlike the others, acknowledges his obligations."

The number of commentators is great; yet if the uncopied portions were to be collected, they would, perhaps, occupy a single duodecimo.

It was a curious mistake that a celebrated English clergyman recently made; in printing his Philippic against Theatres, he actually copied it wholly from another writer, without the slightest acknowledgment. Bunn detected this, and printing the article from both in parallels-simply asked what faith could be reposed in the reverend pilferer.

A few years ago, a work was published in London, under the title of "Anecdotes of Napoleon," and, would it be credited, that this wonderful production was neither more nor less than a compilation literally rendered from the German, of a Life of Frederic the Great, the name of the emperor being substituted for that of the latter. Another instance of fraud occurred in Captain Marryatt's "Narrative of M. Violet," in which some wholesale plagiarisms were perpetrated upon two American authors, Kendall and Gregg.

Punch profanely jokes about some "sprigs of divinity," who are accustomed to "bone" their sermons, having recourse to skeletons, which they keep in their closets, and with which they