The object, however, of this Note is not to shake VARRO'S belief in the impeccability of Gray, for whose genius I entertain the highest admiration and respect, but to show your readers that the imputation of plagiarism against that poet is not wholly unfounded. First, we have the well-known line in his poem of _The Bard_,-- "Give ample room and verge enough,"-- which is shown to have been appropriated from the following passage in Dryden's tragedy of _Don Sebastian_: "Let fortune empty her whole quiver on me; I have a soul that, like an _ample_ shield, Can take in all, and _verge enough_ for more." To this I shall add the famous apothegm at the close of the following stanzas, in his Ode _On a Prospect of Eton College_: "Yet, ah! why should they _know_ their fate, Since _sorrow_ never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies; ... ... _Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise_." The same thought is expressed by Sir W. Davenant in the lines: "Then ask not bodies doom'd to die To what abode they go: Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, 'Tis better not to know." But the source of Gray's apothegm is still more obviously traceable to these lines in Prior: "Seeing aright we see our woes; Then what avails us to have eyes? _From ignorance our comfort flows, The only wretched are the wise._" A third sample in Gray is borrowed from Milton. The latter, in speaking of the Deity, has this beautiful image: "_Dark with excessive light_ thy skirts appear." And Gray, with true poetic feeling, has applied this image to Milton himself in those forceful lines in the _Progress of Poesy_, in which he alludes to the poet's blindness: "The living throne, the sapphire blaze, Where angels tremble while they gaze, He saw; but, _blasted with excess of light_, Closed his eyes in endless night." There is a passage in Longinus which appears to me to have furnished Milton with the germ of this thought. The Greek rhetorician is commenting on the use of figurative language, and, after illustrating his views by a quotation from Demosthenes, he adds: "In what has the orator here _concealed_ the figure? plainly _in its own lustre_." In this passage Longinus elucidates one figure by another,--a not unusual practice with that elegant writer. HENRY H. BREEN. St. Lucia, April, 1851. ON THE APPLICATION OF THE WORD "LITTUS" IN THE SENSE OF RIPA, THE BANK OF A RIVER. The late Marquis Wellesley, towards the close of his long and glorious life, wrote the beautiful copy of Latin verses upon the theme "Salix Babylonica," which is printed among his _Reliquiæ_. In this copy of verses is to be found the line,-- "At tu, pulchra Salix, Thamesini _littoris_ hospes."