Dryden, alluding to his work : When it was only a confused mass of thoughts tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished, and there either to be chosen or rejected by the judgment.-Dedication to the Rival Ladies, 1664. Lord Byron's appropriation of the same idea :— As yet 'tis but a chaos Of darkly brooding thoughts: my fancy is For the selection of the pausing judgment. Doge of Venice There is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest change from rich to naked, from cieled roofs to arched coffins, from living like gods to die like men.-Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying, chap. i. sect. 1, p. 272, ed. Edin. Here's an acre sown indeed F. BEAUMONT. Coleridge. The Nightingale. A conversation poem. The nightingale 'Most musical, most melancholy' bird! A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, . . . he, and such as he, First named these notes a melancholy strain. Plato Phædo, 77 (p. 85, Steph.): Men, because they fear death themselves, slander the swans, and say that they sing from pain lamenting their death, and do not consider that no bird sings when hungry, or cold, or suffering any other pain; no, not even the nightingale, and the swallow, and the hoopoe, which you know are said to sing for grief, &c. Campbell's famous line, Like angels visits, few and far between, has been clearly shown by a correspondent in another paper, to be all but copied from Blair : like an ill-used ghost Not to return; or if it did, its visits, Like those of angels, short and far between. Blair's Grave. But the same phrase, though put differently, occurs in a religious poem of Norris, of Bemerton, who died in 1711 :— But those who soonest take their flight, Are the most exquisite and strong, Like angels visits, short and bright, Mortality's too weak to bear them long. In Norris's Miscellanies, in a poem "To the Memory of my dear Neece, M. C." (Stanza A, p. 10, ed. 1692), are the following lines: No wonder such a noble mind Her way to heaven so soon could find: There is a strange inclination to attribute similarity of sentiment to plagiarism; as if it were almost impossible for two men of genius to hit upon the same notions, independently of each other. In Propertius (II. i. 3, 4), we find :— Non hæc Calliope, non hæc mihi cantat Apollo, In Burns we read: O, were I on Parnassus' hill! To sing how dear I love thee. My Muse maun be thy bonnie seľ. Had Burns been much of a Latin scholar, he would probably have been accused of stealing from Propertius. Again, few persons are unacquainted with Burns's linesHer 'prentice han' she tried on man, An' then she made, &c. In an old play, Cupid's Whirligig (4to. 1607), we read :— Man was made when Nature was but an apprentice, but woman when she was a skilful mistress of her art. Pliny, in his Natural History, has the pretty notion thatNature, in learning to form a lily, turned out a convolvulus. LIFTING EXPERIMENT. A living man, lying on a bench, extended as a corpse, can be lifted with ease by the forefingers of two persons standing on each side, provided the lifters inhale at the moment the effort is being made. This curious fact was recorded by Pepys, who, in his Diary, under the date 31st July, 1665 (vol. iii. p. 60), writes as follows: This evening with Mr. Brisband, speaking of enchantments and spells, I telling him some of my charmes; he told me this of his own knowledge, at Bourdeaux, in France. The words were these: "Voyei un Corps mort. Royde come un Baston, Froid comme Martre, Leger come un Esprit, Levons te au nom de Jesus Christ." He saw four little girls, very young ones, all kneeling each of them, upon one knee; and one begun the first line, whispering in the eare of the next, and the second to the third, and the third to the fourth, and she to the first. Then the first begun the second line, and so round quite through; and putting each one finger only to a boy that lay flat upon his back on the ground, as if he was dead: at the end of the words, they did with their four fingers raise this boy as high as they could reach. And Mr. Brisband, being there, and wondering at it, as also being afraid to see it, for they would have had him to have bore a part in saying the words, in the room of one of the little girls that was so young that they could hardly make her learn to repeat the words, did, for fear there might be same slight used in it by the boy, or that the boy might be light, call the cook of the house, a very lusty fellow, as Sir G. Carteret's cook, who is very big and they did raise him just in the same manner. This is one of the strangest things I ever heard, but he tells it me of his own knowledge, and I do heartily believe it to be true. I inquired of him whether they were Protestant or Catholique girles; and he told me they were Protestant, which made it the more strange to me. : In illustration of this passage, Lord Braybrooke adds, at vol. v. p. 245, the following note, which we insert, as it serves to bring before our readers evidence of this, at present, inexplicable fact on the authority of one of the most accomplished philosophers of our day : The secret is now well known, and is described by Sir David Brewster, in his Natural Magic, p. 256. One of the most remarkable and inexplicable experiments relative to the strength of the human frame is that in which a heavy man is raised up the instant that his own lungs, and those of the persons who raise him, are inflated with air. This experiment was, I believe, first shown in England a few years ago by Major H., who saw it performed in a large party at Venice, under the direction of an officer of the American navy. As Major H. performed it more than once in my presence, I shall describe as nearly as possible the method which he prescribed. The heaviest person in the company lies down upon two chairs, his legs being supported by the one, and his back by the other. Four persons, one at eash leg, and one at each shoulder, then try to raise him; and they find his dead weight to be very great, from the difficulty they experience in supporting him. When he is replaced in the chair, each of the four persons take hold of the body as before; and the person to be lifted gives two siguals, by clapping his hands. At the first signal, he himself, and the four lifters, begin to draw a long, full breath; and when the inhalation is completed, or the lungs filled, the second signal is given for raising the person from the chair. To his own surprise, and that of his bearers, he rises with the greatest facility, as if he were no heavier than a feather. On several occasions, I have observed, that when one of the bearers performs his part ill by making the inhalation out of time, the part of the body which he tries to raise is left as it were behind. As you have repeatedly seen this experiment, and performed the part both of the load and of the bearer, you can testify how remarkable the effect appears to all parties, and how complete is the conviction, either that the load has been lightened, or the bearer strengthened, by the prescribed process. At Venice the experiment was performed in a much more imposing manner. The heaviest man in the party was raised and sustained upon the points of the forefingers of six persons. Major H. declared that the experiment would not succeed, if the person lifted were placed upon a board, and the strength of the individuals applied to the board. He conceived it necessary that the bearers should communicate directly with the body to be raised. I have not had an opportunity of making any experiments relative to these curious facts; but whether the general effect is an illusion, or the result of known principles, the subject merits a careful investigation. The inhalation of the lifters the moment the effort is made is doubtless essential, and for this reason:-When we make a great effort, either in pulling or lifting, we always fill the chest with air previous to the effort; and when the inhalation is completed, we close the rima glottidis to keep the air in the lungs. The chest being thus kept expanded, the pulling or lifting muscles have received, as it were, a fulcrum round which their power is exerted, and we can thus lift the greatest weight which the muscles are capable of doing. When the chest collapses by the escape of the air, the lifters lose their muscular power. The inhalation of air by the lifter can certainly add nothing to the power of the lifters, or diminish his own weight, which is only increased by the weight of the air which he inhales. In the Zoist for January, is an article entitled, "A sugges tion to explain certain Phenomena of Levity," in which the sub |