likely to be made. I have done my best to get out of the scrape, if it is one, by my note, No. 84; and, if example and precedent be allowed by our poetical jurists that authority which they claim in other judicatories, I beg leave to say, “fecere alii sæpe, item boni,"* I have only trod in this respect in the footsteps of others infinitely my betters; and, to support me in this, I particularly pray in aid, in the first place, Homer himself, who, in that dramatic scene which I have cited in the note on stanza xxvi. makes the humiliated and contrite Helen call herself by a namet of which no well-bred person in our days ever pronounces more than the first letter; and, secondly,―on our own Par

* Ter.

66

+ σε Δαὴρ ἀῦτ' ἐμὸς ἔσκε κυνώπιδος, ἔι ποῖ ̓ ἔην γε.”

nassus, the refined author of the Rape of the Lock; not to name a host of other poets, as well of ancient as modern, foreign as domestic renown; confining my appeal to those compositions of theirs-for there it is that their cases are, as the lawyers say, in point of which the purport and general tenor most clearly prove that they must have meant to avoid every thing that could be considered as low and plebeian.

I must, at all events, request my fair and young readers to do me the justice to observe, that no example, nor any blind veneration for the greatest poetical names, have any where seduced me to follow any precedent in the adoption of words which the modest meek-eyed virgin might blush to see, or her uncontaminated ears be shocked to hear.

I will now state a fourth sort of fault

which many may find, and indeed some have found, in my notes: I mean the very frequent quotation of parallel passages from different authors of high eminence, both ancient and modern. In this I own I gave way to a taste natural to me, and almost innate, and increased by unsuspended habits of more than half a century. I like to see how fine writers express the same ideas, sometimes in almost the same words, whether knowingly or not; and why? because such repetitions fix a sort of stamp on the ideas and expressions, like the stamp of the mint, which authenticates and certifies the purity and sterling value of our current coins; and indeed to me such passages, even when undisguised imitations, often seem to confer on the original thought as it were new and original beauty or ef fect. Such an imitator was Virgil, who yet merited from one of the greatest of poets, the description of "that fountain which

pours forth so broad a stream of elo

quence,"

"Quella fonte

Che spande di parlar si largo fiume ;"* and such imitators of Horace and Juvenal were Boileau and Pope, of the one as well as of the other of whom it may be said, that he was

“Même en imitant toujours original."

THE ADMIRERS of the divine, though sometimes a little profane, Lodovico, must well remember those exquisite stanzas towards the end of his immortal Orlando, where he supposes himself, after a long and perilous voyage, to be arrived at length in sight of his native harbour, and that he already perceives numerous friends, whom he names

* Dante l' Inferno..

or characterizes, come down to the shore to hail his return, and preparing to embrace and surround him with every tender sign

of gratulation. It would be a most extravagant abuse of the privilege of comparing great things to small, if, from my not less worthy, and, I may add, in many instances not less illustrious friends who have taken the kindest interest in my poor enterprise, I were to dream of similar gratulation on the return of my little bark from her short and undignified cruise; but I trust those friends will not disdain to allow me the satisfaction of here dedicating the fruits of my coasting expedition-not on that account the more secure from the dangers of shipwreck-to each and all of them;

To the ingenious and learned friend, as deeply versed in professional science as he is conversant with all the branches of