Dryden in ‘Absalom and Achitophel’ has these lines, David for him his tuneful harp had strung And heaven had wanted one immortal song. Pope in his Epistle to Arbuthnot has Friend of my life which did not you prolong The world had wanted many an idle song. * * * * * Tickell's lines While the charmed reader with thy thought complies And views thy Rosamond with Henry's eyes, are evidently borrowed from those of Boileau, En vain contre ‘Le Cid’ un ministre se ligue; Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrigue. * * * * * The expression, ‘nemorumque noctem’ occurring in one of Gray's Latin odes, has been repeatedly found fault with—yet Virgil has ‘medio nimborum in nocte.’ * * * * * {579} Selden observes of Henry VIII, that he was a king with a pope in his belly. * * * * * In the ‘Nubes’ of Aristophanes, there are several Greek verses in _rhyme_. * * * * * Of the ten tragedies which are attributed to Seneca, (the only Roman tragedies extant,) nine are on Greek subjects. * * * * * Ariosto says of one of his heroes, that, in the heat of combat, not perceiving that he was a dead man, he continued to fight valiantly, dead as he was. Il pover' huomo che non s'en era accorto, Andava combattendo, e era morto. * * * * * The author of ‘La Maniere de bien Penser’ speaks of a French divine who, to prove that young persons sometimes die before old ones, cited the text, ‘Prœcucurrit citius Petro Johannes et venit primus ad monumentum.’ * * * * * There is no passage among all the writings of antiquity more sublime than these lines of Silius Italicus. The words are addressed to a young man of Capua, who proposed to assassinate Hannibal at a banquet. Fallis te mensas inter quod credis inermem, Tot bellis quæsita viro, tot cœdibus armat Majestas eterna ducem: si admoveris ora Cannas et Trebium ante oculos, Trasymenaque busta, Et Pauli stare ingentum miraberis umbram. * * * * * Giace l'alta Cartago: à pena i segni De l'alte sui ruine il lido serba: Muoino le città, muoino i regni; Copre i fasti e le pompe arena et herba: E l'huom d'esser mortal per che si sdegni. These lines of Tasso are a curious specimen of literary robbery—being made up entirely of passages from Lucan and Sulspicius. Lucan says of Troy Jam tota teguntur Pergama dumetis: etiam perire ruinæ: and Sulspicius in a letter to Cicero says of Megara, Egina, Corinth, &c.—“Hem! nos homunculi indignamur si quis nostrum interiit, quorum vita brevior esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidorum cadavera projecta jaceant.” * * * * *