Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/306

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [lO* S. I. MARCH 26, 1904.

followed in'NovaSolyma.' However, whether we consider the earlier Armada epic or the later unsurpassable ones of Milton's blind old age, in neither case can it be allowed that the author was a plagiarist. There is the "strange case" of him and Vondel the Dutchman, it is true, and the undoubted and remarkable similarities and parallel passages are amazing ; but they need not induce any one to consider Milton a plagiarist any more than to consider the immortal Elizabethan author of the chronicle plays to be in the same category because he, page after page, presents his readers with almost the very words of Holinshed. The fact is these two illustrious borrowers took, as it were, lead, or tin, or some baser metal, and transmuted it by their wondrous alchemy into the finest gold the world knows of. If this be pla- giarism or literary theft, the world is willing to have more of such deeds. Take the case of Francis Bacon. If ever a man knew how to put in better phrase what had been written or said by other people, and to magnificate and glorify it in the process of change, then Francis Bacon was the man. Indeed, this was frequently admitted by both his friends and enemies, and to some extent allowed by himself; but he, too, was no plagiarist, though he was able to bombast a line or two out of Holinshed better even than Shakspear of Stratford, as many people think.

~NE QUID NIMIS.

Addison, in the following passage from the Spectator, probably refers to these imita- tions :

"I have likewise endeavoured to shew how the Genius of the Poet shines by a happy Invention, a distant Allusion, or a judicious Imitation ; how he has copied or improved Homer or Virgil, and raised his own Imaginations by the Use which he has made of several Poetical Passages in Scripture. I might have inserted also several passages of Tasso, which our Author has imitated." No. 369 on Milton's Paradise Lost.'

All the great epic poets since Homer have enriched their poems intentionally with the thoughts of their predecessors : and Milton certainly has done so as much as any oi th em. E. YAEDLEY.

MERRY THOUGHTS IN A SAD PLACE ' (10 U S. i. 141, 193). The authorship of these lines has always been a matter of interest to students of seventeenth-century verse, and i short bibliographical note may perhaps pro duce more evidence upon the point.

Twelve stanzas of the poem (omitting that beginning "What though I cannot see my King ) were printed in a pamphlet of four

leaves, together with verses ' Upon his Majesties coming to Holmby ' and ' A Pane- ?yrick faithfully representing the proceed- ings of the Parliament.' The pamphlet has no ritle and is undated ; it is bound among the tracts of 1647 in the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum, but part of the manuscript date has been cut off, and it might possibly oe 1649. The lines are headed ' The Liberty of the Imprisoned Royalist,' and this is, I oelieve, their first appearance in print. They nave been offered for sale by auction in this form as the work of Lovelace, but it is not necessary to suppose that their author had even seen the lines to Althea, as the ideas ommon to both may be found in various other places.

The whole poem, entitled 'The Requiem or Libertie of an Imprisoned Royalist, G.M.,' appears in some copies of ' Vaticinium Voti-

vum ; or, Palsemon's Prophetick Prayer

Trajecti. Anno Caroli Martyris primo.' Mr. Percy Dobell, of Charing Cross Road, kindly called my attention to this, and procured me a copy of the book. Other places in which it was printed are : ' Parnassus Biceps,' 1656, p. 107, 'The Liberty and Requiem of an Imprisoned Royalist'; ' Wit and Drollery,' 1656, p. 11, and ' Rump Songs,' 1662, pt. i. p. 242 (reprint), ' Loyalty Confin'd ' ; ' Westminster Drollery,; 1671, p. 96 (ed. Ebsworth), 'The Loyal Prisoner.'

I have purposely omitted Lloyd's 'Memoirs,' 1668, p. 95, where it was introduced by these words : " But I will cloath his free thoughts in the closest restraint, with the generous Expressions of a worthy Personage that suffered deeply in those times, and injoys only the conscience of having so suffered in these." What Lloyd says has been thought to fit L'Estrange, the traditional author (see Percy's 'Reliques,' ii. bk. iii. No. 12, 1767), who was seized near Lynn in December, 1644, and imprisoned until he was allowed to escape from the Tower in the spring of 1648; but Mr. Ebsworth points out that he had not gone entirely unrewarded after the Restora- tion, having been appointed Licenser in 1663.

The poem has also been assigned to Lord Capel ('Royal and Noble Authors,' ed. Park, iii. 35) ; but apart from the difficulty in his case of Lloyd's statement, MS. authority is, I believe, in favour of L'Estrange, who was accepted by Archdeacon Hannah as the author. G. THORN-DRURY.

" BRIDGE " : ITS DERIVATION (10 th S. i. 189). This game is said to have been brought to England from Constantinople, where it had been introduced by Russian members of the