Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/64

 46 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 S.X.JAN. 21, 1922. and partly on account of the obscurity of his later works. Campbell's obligation is nowhere more j evident than in ' Lines on the View from i St. Leonards ' (1831), where diction, imagerj^, | thought and mood show the influence of j 'Childe Harold,' Canto IV. A few! quotations from each poem make com- ment unnecessary : ' C.H.' Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form i Glasses itself in tempests. ' St. L.' Hail to thy face and odours, glorious Sea ! It is the mirror of the stars, where all Their hosts within the concave firmament, Can see themselves at once. ' C.H.' ... upon the watery plain. ' St. L.' Earth has not a plain So boundless and so beautiful as thine. 'C.H.' There is society where none intrudes. By the deep Sea, and music in its roar. ' St L.' Great beauteous Being ! . . . . . . How welcomer Thy murmurs than the murmurs of the world ! ' C.H.' . . . thine azure brow. 1 St. L.' With yonder sky thy mistress. From Tier brow ' Thou tak'st thy moods. . . . ' C.H.' Calm or convulsed, in breeze or gale or storm. ' St. L.' Mighty Sea ! Chameleon-like thou changest. . . . ' C.H.' Man marks the ea.rth with ruin, his control Stops with thy shore. ' St. L.' Creations Common ! which no human power Can parcel or enclose. . . . And brook'st commandment from the Heavens alone. ' C.H.' * I have loved ihee. Ocean ! ' St. L.' . . . and the natural human heart Fs therefore bound to thee with holy love. ' C.H.' Dark-lieavlnq. ' St. L.' His darker hints. ' C.H.' . . . boundless, endless, and sublime The image of the Eternity Tune writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow : Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. i ' St. L.' Old Ocean was Eternity of ages ere we breathed Existence, and he will be beautiful When all the living world that see him now Shall roll unconscious dust around the sun. Only a careful reading of the two poems,, however, can give an adequate idea of the- extent of Campbell's borrowing. It may be objected that there are only a few things to- gay about the ocean, and that these are common property of poets. But originality of conception and image and phrase are reasonably expected of a poet, and these Campbell can hardly be said to have given us in the ''Lines on the View from St. Leonards.' This is not the only instance of Campbell's too great dependence on Byron. The former's 'Last Man' (1823) was so much like Byron's 'Darkness' (published 1816) that the poet thought it best to justify himself by explaining in a letter to his frien.d Gray that the idea expressed in the two poems was originally his own.* Nor is it the first charge of plagiarism brought against him. For in 1825, in the columns of Blackwood's, one who signed himself " Detector " pointed out the fact that 'To a Rainbow ' must have been written with Vaughan's poem on the same theme in mind.f In this case plso there is enough similarity of phrase and thought to warrant a note or annotation, but no edition of Campbell's poetry has a comment on the parallelism. W ALTEB GBAHAM. Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, TJJS.A. NEEDHAM'S POINT CEMETERY, BAR- BADOS JAMES SIMS (see ante, p. 23). It will be noted that the list of the English dead who lie buried in this cemetery includes the name of James Sims, naval t-chool- master of H.M.S. Bacchante, which took Prince Albert Victor, and Prince George of Wales round the world in 1879-80. This young man died on Jan. 1, 1880, in hospital, to which he had been transferred from the ship on the preceding day, at the early age of 23. It is recorded in ' The Cruise of Her Majesty's Ship Bacchante ' (London, Mac- millan and Co., 1886) that he was buried at 5.30 p.m. on the same day ki in the military cemetery by the edge of the sea," and that " George [now King George V.] happening to have that watch, marched as the midship- man in charge of the funeral party of Campbell,' vol. ii., p. 243. Of. London Magazine and Review, 1825, new series, vii. 588. t ' Plagiarism by Mr. Thomas Campbell, 'Black- icood's, xviii. 13U
 * Seattle, ' Life and Letters of Thomas