Notes and Queries, Number 30, May 25, 1850

Notes and Queries, Number 30, May 25, 1850
Various

Various

Notes and Queries, Number 30, May 25, 1850

NOTES

DR. JOHNSON AND DR. WARTON

Amongst the poems of the Rev. Thos. Warton, vicar of Basingstoke, who is best remembered as the father of two celebrated sons, is one entitled The Universal Love of Pleasure, commencing—

"All human race, from China to Peru,
Pleasure, howe'er disguised by art, pursue."
&c. &c.

Warton died in 1745, and his Poems were published in 1748.

Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes appeared in 1749; but Boswell believes that it was composed in the preceding year. That Poem, as we well remember, commences thus tamely:—

"Let observation with extensive view,
Survey Mankind from China to Peru."

Though so immeasurably inferior to his own, Johnson may have noticed these verses of Warton's with some little attention, and unfortunately borrowed the only prosaic lines in his poem. Besides the imitation before quoted, both writers allude to Charles of Sweden. Thus Warton says,—

"'Twas hence rough Charles rush'd forth to ruthless war."

Johnson, in his highly finished picture of the same monarch, says,—

"War sounds the trump, he rushes to the field."

    J.H. MARKLAND.

Bath.

SPENSER'S MONUMENT

In the Lives of English Poets, by William Winstanley (London, printed by H. Clark for Samuel Manship, 1687), in his account of Spenser, p. 92., he says, "he died anno 1598, and was honourably buried at the sole charge of Robert, first of that name, Earl of Essex, on whose monument is written this epitaph:—

"Edmundus Spenser, Londinensis, Anglicorum poetarum nostri seculi fuit princeps, quod ejus Poemata, faventibus Musis, et victuro genio conscripa comprobant. Obiit immatura morte, anno salutis 1598, et prope Galfredum Chaucerum conditur, qui foelicisime Poesin Anglicis literis primus illustravit. In quem hæc scripta sunt Epitaphia.

"Hic prope Chaucerum situs est Spenserius, illi
Prominens ingenio, proximum ut tumulo
Hic prope Chaucerum Spensere poeta poetam
Conderis, et versud quam tumulo proprior,
Anglica te vivo vixit, plausitque l'oesis;
Nunc moritura timet, te moriente mori."

I have also a folio copy of Spenser, printed by Henry Hills for Jonathan Edwin, London, 1679. In a short life therein printed, it says that he was buried near Chaucer, 1596; and the frontispiece is an engraving of his tomb, by E. White, which bears this epitaph:—

"Heare lyes (expecting the second comminge of our Saviour, Christ Jesus) the body of Edmond Spenser, the Prince of Poets in his tyme, whose Divine spirit needs noe othir witness than the works which he left behind him. He was borne in London in the yeare 1510, and died in the yeare 1596."

Beneath are these lines:—

"Such is the tombs the Noble Essex gave
Great Spenser's learned reliques, such his grave:
Howe'er ill-treated in his life he were,
His sacred bones rest honourably here."

How are these two epitaphs, with their differing dates, to be reconciled? Can he have been born in 1510, as the first one says "obiit immaturâ morte?" Now eighty-five is not very immature; and I believe he entered at Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1569, at which time he would be fifty-nine, and that at a period when college education commenced at an earlier age than now. Vertue's portrait, engraved 1727, takes as a motto the last two lines of the first epitaph—"Anglica te vivo," &c.

    E.N.W

Southwark, April 29 1850.

BORROWED THOUGHTS

Crenius wrote a dissertation De Furibus Librariis, and J. Conrad Schwarz another De Plagio Literario, in which some curious appropriations are pointed out; your pages have already contained some additional recent instances. The writers thus pillaged might exclaim, "Pereant iste qui post nos nostra dixerunt." Two or three instances have occurred to me which, I think, have not been noticed. Goldsmith's Madame Blaize is known to be a free version of La fameuse La Galisse. His well-known epigram,—

"Here lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed,"

is borrowed from the following by the Chevalier de Cailly (or d'Aceilly, as he writes himself) entitled,—

"La Mort du Sieur Etienne.
"Il est au bout de ses travaux,
Il a passé le Sieur Etienne;
En ce monde il eut tant des maux,
Qu'on ne croit pas qu'il revienne."

Another well-know epigram,—

"I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,"

is merely a version of the 33d epigram of the first books of those by the witty Roger de Bussy, Comte de Rabutin:—

"Je ne vous aime pas, Hylas,
Je n'en saurois dire la cause,
Je sais seulement une chose;
C'est que je ne vous aime pas."

Lastly, Prior's epitaph on himself has its prototype in one long previously written by or for one John Carnegie:—

"Johnnie Carnegie lais heer,
Descendit of Adam and Eve,
Gif ony con gang hieher,
I'se willing gie him leve."

    S.W. SINGER