New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1854-02-18

ssiimer empruntent parent mais CON
nare fexcelence ct cest aors que Ia Difference
meme mot. en- dVerses houches, parait e plus
Before proceeding, however, in this general
indictment of authors, let us, to show what their
practices are, call forward one OF them as
states evidence against the rest. In that anu
sing piece of sadness, Burton's :" Anatomy OF
Melancholy he says: g That which L have is
stolen from others, dicitque miai mea pasaala,
fur es.'s If that severe doom Of Synesius be
true it is greater ofense to steal dead mems
labors than their clothess-what shall become
Of most writer's | hold up my hand at the
bar, among others, and am guilty of felony in
this kind ha5es eonftenten, retsm 1 am con-
tent to be pressed with the rest And again,
as if even this large confession had not suffi-
GENTLY eased his remorseful mind, he says else
where g As apothecaries, we make new mix
lures every day-pour out of one vessel into
another; and as the old Romans robbed all the
cities of the world, to set out their bad-sited
Rome, we skim off the cream Of other mems wits;
we pick the choice flowers of their titled gar
dens, to set out our own sterile plats.''
Letus now, being ready therefor, return to
Lord Byron for we have tracked the noble poet
iuuCus duI luodu ~ Puiouo b Sooo oSoi
further We have just shown the probable
source Of the first part Of an excellent passage:
of its equally clever continuation, we will make
the origin still more apparent. 1t goes on as
follows, from the last words we cited:
To what straits old Time reduces
Fraii man when paper, evn arag ike this,
Survives himself his tomb, and all that's his
And when his bones dust his blank, 81
His station, generation, even his nation
Become q thing, or nothing, to rank
In chronological cnmmemoration,
Some dull MS oblivion long mas sank,
Or grdrel, stone found in barracks station
In digging the foundations of closet,
May turn his name up, rare deposit.
Now, the whole leading idea in this is very
little but witty version Of what st. Pierre had
already beautifully said of Inscriptions
esgraven stones lin his Paul and Virginia :;
over which. of course, Byron had hung, in his
boyhood, like everybody else ST. Pierre says
Quelque paisir que ai dams voyages voir uue
statue GU un monument de rautiquite ieu al encore
advantage lire nne inscription ben ecrite me semble
alcrs June yox humane de Ia pierre, sc fast
entepdre ravers les secles ct, saddressan lhomGe
au msn DIES deserts iui disc quill NEST pas seui ct que
daatres hoomes dams ces memes ieux, ont senti pese
ct soutert eoume lei que 81 cete inscription de
queque nation aheenne qui nc subsste plus, ellie etend
sentiment de son immortalite ui nontrant qu'
Pensee survecu la RUNE meme d. IN empire.
Nor IS the next part of the same passage with
out It's probable hint. He wrote g Hints from
Horace" and certainly more than he avows, as
we shall see, To proceed in this long quotation,
which we are thus compelled to break to pieces
And GLORY long has made the Sages smile:
lis something nothing, words, illusion wind
Depending more upon the historians style
Than on the name person leaves behind.
Troy owes TO Homer what whist HoyIe.
The present century growing blind
To the great MarlbDros skill in giving knocks.
until his late life, by Archdeacon Coke.
Here, the first example that he gives Of the
historian, whose style has preserved mems
memory, is Homer, bard and he knew that
poets were the first and are the most far-per
petuating historians. He had then, in his
mind, the famous verses in which Horace had
said that it is vain for man to have been
hero, unless he has some one to sing him:
Where fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi: sed oinpeS iilachrimahiles
Urgentur, iguotiqns, Tonga
Nocte careut qua vate sacra.
Paule espul0e distat inertia
Celata yirtus.
But the fact becomes almost certain when
we consider that, in another part of the same
poem, Byron almost literally translates the
words of Horace which we have cited:
Bravo men were living before Agamcmnon
And since, exceeding yalorous and sage
gqod zeal nke him too, though quite the same
But then they shone not on the poets page
And SO have been forgotten.
It's difficult to doubt these cases. Here fol-
lows one, however, that admits of no question.
10 Murray, the bookseller, in derision of some
OF his latest publications, Byron wrote the fol-
loving string of epigrams, which he entities
"Versicles
have seen the CAristabel:
Yerywe,
peruAed the Missionary.
Pretty, very
READ sheet OF Margaret Of .ftsiaa
Can you?
'"tned page oil SCOTS Waterloo:
,,,,. Pooh pooh
hAooAeo az HorasWofth.s milkwhite Rplstea doe
Hiilo.
All this is directly copied from Boileau,s
two epigrams on two feeble and unsuccessful
tragedies Of Gorneille, produced in succession,
when he was superannuated. On the represen,
tation of the first, he wrote this:
Jai WI pagesi1as:
Heas
But the .atiAa soon following, and even ex-
ceeding its elder brother in feeble extravaganza,
Bolleau once more wrote:
Apres rAgesiaB,
Heas
Apres rAtila,
Hola!
These are, perhaps, the shortest and sharpest
of epigrams. Not SO short may prove our illus
trations of Lord Byron's originality.