Various - Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851

Query: Who was the author of the above?

J.F.M. (Vol. i., p. 101.) remarks, "I would venture to throw out a hint, that an edition of this Elegy , exhibiting all the known translations, arranged in double columns, might be made a noble monument to the memory of Gray." It has been asserted that there is scarcely a thought in this Elegy that Gray has not borrowed from some writer, ancient or modern and if this be true, I would take the liberty of adding a hint to that of J.F.M., namely, that the proposed edition should contain a third column, exhibiting all the known plagiarisms in this famous Elegy . To begin with the first line—

Lord Byron, in his notes to the third canto of Don Juan , says that this was adopted from the following passage in Dante's Purgatory , canto viii.:

And it is worthy of notice that this passage corresponds with the first line of Giannini's translation of the Elegy, as quoted by J.F.M.:—

I must add, however, that long before Lord Byron thought of writing Don Juan , Mr. Cary, in his excellent translation of the Italian poet, had noticed this plagiarism in Gray; and what is more, had shown that the principal thought, the "giorno che si muore," was borrowed by Dante from Statius's

St. Lucia, West Indies, Nov. 1850.

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Layard in his Nineveh , vol. ii., p. 471., in his description of "the sacred emblems carried by the priests," says, they are principally the fruit or cone of the pine.

"… and the square utensil which, as I have already remarked, appears to have been of embossed or engraved metal, or of metal carved to represent wicker work, or sometimes actually of wicker work."

He adds, that M. Lajard "has shown the connection between the cone of the cypress and the worship of Venus in the religious systems of the East;" that it has been suggested that "the square vessel held the holy water," that, "however this may be, it is evident from their constant occurrence on Assyrian monuments, that they were very important objects in religious ceremonies. Any attempt to explain their use and their typical meaning, can at present be little better than ingenious speculation."

There is a passage in Lucian De Dea Syria , §. 13., which may serve to elucidate this feature in the Nineveh marbles. He is referring to the temple of Hierapolis and a ceremony which Deucalion was said to have introduced, as a memorial of the great flood and the escaping of the waters:

"Δις εκαστου ετεος εκ θαλασσης υδωρ ες τον νηον απικνεεται· φερουσι δε ουκ ιρεες μουνον αλλα πασα Συριη και Αραβιη, και περηθεν του Ευφρητεω, πολλοι ανθρωποι ες θαλασσαν ερχονται, και παντες υδωρ φερουσαι, τα, πρωτα μεν εν τωι νηωι εκχρουσι," &c.

"Twice every year water is brought from the sea to the temple. Not only the priests, but" all Syria and Arabia, "and many from the country beyond the Euphrates come to the sea, and all bring away water, which they first pour out in the temple," and then into a chasm which Lucian had previously explained had suddenly opened and swallowed up the flood of waters which had threatened to destroy the world. Tyndale, in his recent book on Sardinia, refers to this passage in support of a similar utensil appearing in the Sarde paganism.

It may be interesting to refer to another passage in the Dea Syria , in which Lucian is describing the splendour of the temple of Hierapolis; he says that the deities themselves are really present:—

"Και Θεοι δε καρτα αυτοισι εμφανεες· ιδρωει γαρ δη ων παρα σφισι τα ξοατα,"

When the very images sweat, and he adds, are moved and utter oracles. It is probable Milton had this in recollection when, in his noble Nativity Ode , he sings of the approach of the true Deity, at whose coming

Gaudentio di Lucca. —Sir James Mackinstosh, in his Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy , adverts to the belief that Bishop Berkeley was the author of Gaudentio di Lucca , but without adopting it.

"A romance," he says, "of which a journey to an Utopia, in the centre of Africa, forms the chief part, called The Adventures of Signor Gaudentio di Lucca , has been commonly ascribed to him; probably on no other ground than its union of pleasing invention with benevolence and elegance."— Works , vol. i. p. 132. ed. 1846.

Sir J. Mackintosh, like most other modern writers who mention the book, seems not to have been aware of the decisive denial of this report, by Bishop Berkeley's son, inserted in the third volume of Kippis's Biographia Britannica .

George Wither, the Poet, a Printer (Vol. ii., p. 390.).—In addition to DR. RIMBAULT'S extract from Wither's Britain's Remembrancer , showing that he printed (or rather composed) every sheet thereof with his own hand, I find, in a note to Mr. R.A. Willmott's volume of the Lives of the English Sacred Poets , in that interesting one of George Wither, the following corroboration of this singular labour of his: the poem, independent of the address to the King and the præmonition, consisting of between nine and ten thousand lines, many of which, I doubt not, were the production of his brain while he stood at the printing-case. A MS. note of Mr. Park's, in one of the many volumes of Wither which I possess, confirms me in this opinion.