interest-and it must be remembered, beyond the fact of his transcendant genius, that Shakespeare did not hesitate to appropriate in a very wholesale way the lay figures and sometimes the living men and women of other people, and either group his own picture around them or find a subordinate place for them in what is principally his own drama. The thesis is one too large adequately to be maintained and illustrated in a breath of "Table Talk," and I intended only to quote a remarkable example in current literature. But I may just mention two illustrations which will be within the knowledge of most readers-I mean Toots and Mrs. Poyser. The ideal of a simplehearted, "chuckle-headed," inoffensive young man, whose absurdities are invariably kindly, was, with some two or three others, very powerful in the mind of Charles Dickens, and we find traces of Toots more or less successfully disguised in nearly all his novels. In "David Copperfield" he appears as Traddles, with very little difference save that he is amongst new acquaintances and has let his hair grow in an unruly manner. George Eliot's clear and nervous conception of a masterful housewife, rich in possessions of homespun linen and great in all housewifely wisdom, reaches its highest expression in Mrs. Poyser. But it is clear enough in "Middlemarch" when we are introduced to Mrs. Garth, and in "The Mill on the Floss" when we sit in Mrs. Glegg's best parlour.

THE example that suggests these remarks is not one of selfplagiarism of a distinctive conception of character, but of a notable illustration. There are few poems which have acquired a wider popularity than Longfellow's "Psalm of Life," and to this day a public address to the members of a Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society appears incomplete unless the speaker quotes the verseLives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And departing leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.

This was written in the dawn of the poet's fame, and when in these closing years of his life he comes to write memorial verses on his dead friend Sumner, he turns the moral thus :—

Alike are life and death

When life in death survives,
And the uninterrupted breath
Inspires a thousand lives.

Were a star quenched on high,

For ages would its light,

Still travelling downward from the sky,

Shine on our mortal sight.

So when a great man dies,

For years beyond our ken,

The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men.

Possibly one's critical sense is dulled by the too great familiarity induced by constant and commonplace repetition, just as the finest melodies grow hateful to the ear when ground out on the omnipresent barrel organ. With that limitation I should say that this returning of the old thought is a great improvement on our old friend of the "Psalm of Life," though there is not the remotest chance of the latter being superseded on the classic ground of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society.

MR. WILLIAM L. SCAN, writing from Marton Endowed School, near Blackpool, moved by several notes from time to time in "Table Talk," says: "In my "Tennyson' I ticked off a long while ago two very curious, though unconscious, plagiarisms, and your little chit-chat on this subject determined me to send you them. I believe they have never been noticed before-certainly I have never seen them or even heard of them. In the fifth stanza of 'Locksley Hall' the Pleiads 'Glitter like a swarm of fire flies! In Sheiley's 'Cloud' we have as regards the heavenly constellations 'And I laughed to see them whirl and flee like a swarm of golden bees. Again in 'Guinevere,' where Arthur bends o'er the prostrate form of his erring wife, and gives utterance to his sorrow and love, 'O imperial moulded form, and beauty such as never woman wore.' In Tasso (Wiffen's translation, Canto V., stanza 61), with regard to Armida, we have the line, And beauty such as nature never gave.' The translation was given in 1824. It would be most interesting to trace the different settings of the same diamond thoughts by our greatest poets."

WHAT is the origin of that curious word "bort" which transpired in the course of the trial of the great City libel case, Rubery versus Grant and Sampson? It was explained to the Chief Baron as a tradeterm standing for almost worthless stones. But whence comes it? A Dutch scholar offers to help me solve the question. In the trading of Holland, he tells me, articles of almost every description of a very inferior quality are termed bocht, and as the Dutch guttural ch would not be caught up by the foreigner, the foreign phonetic transcript of the word would very soon resolve itself into bort. In cases of doubtful etymology of this kind we can investigate only by the

paths of analogy and probability. In this case we have the patent fact that the Dutch at certain periods have had the diamond trade very largely in their hands. And for analogy it is easy to select two or three examples. There is the French word redingote, in which not one of the component elements could be explained by French derivation. It is simply our English riding-coat accommodated to the French ear and subsequently to French orthography. In a similar manner the French have turned the Dutch or German words bei-wacht, bolwerk (by-watch, bulwark), into bivouac and boulevard.

I AM favoured with a note from Mr. Robert Chambers stating that the author of "The £ s. d. of Literature" in the December number of the Gentleman's Magazine materially understates the rate per page paid for contributions to Chambers's Journal. This correction takes me somewhat by surprise, since the writer of "£ s. d." has been, within my knowledge, a frequent contributor to the pages of the famous Edinburgh magazine.

SOME inquiries have reached me, and many guesses have been made, touching the authorship of "Like a Snowball," the extra number of this magazine which was published in the shape of a Christmas Annual. It was thought desirable at the time when the work was prepared for the press, mainly for reasons connected with its composite character, to withhold the names of the authors. Indeed, it was hardly possible to do otherwise without such explanations as would have been unusual on the title-page of a book; but I do not know why I should refuse now to satisfy my correspondents on the point. The conception, the plan, and the plot of "Like a Snowball" were Mr. Francillon's. It was he who contrived the "seven links" in the "chain," and set apart three of those links for treatment by other writers. Mr. D. Christie Murray undertook, for the second link, to describe the dream of little Bessy on the Moor. Mr. W. Senior, better known to my readers as "Red Spinner," related the history of Robert Salcombe, the "Vagabond," up to the time of his setting forth on that journey across the Moor which was to lead him to the rescue of the lost child. And Mr. Frank Percival told the story of Bessy and her lover, under the title of "The Giant's Grave." Each of the four authors had the whole story in his mind in order to perform his separate share of the work, and it happened to several of the personages to have the same or different aspects of their character pourtrayed by different artists.

THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE

MARCH, 1875

DEAR LADY DISDAIN.

BY JUSTIN M'CARTHY, AUTHOR OF "LINLEY ROCHFORD," "A FAIR SAXON," "MY ENEMY'S DAUGHTER," &c.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SPARTAN BOY.

HRISTMAS and Nat had a brisk run to the widow Cramp's, stamping the water out of their clothes as they ran, and laughing a good deal. The whole adventure gave Christmas downright pleasure, for his mind was beginning to be perplexed and disturbed by doubts and pains hitherto unknown to him, and he found it a relief to be torn for the moment away from himself from brooding into any kind of action. The accident had done Nat a world of good; it had brought him to his senses—at least for the hour.

A fire was still burning in Mrs. Cramp's house. The nights usually turned rather cold in Durewoods until the summer had advanced farther on its way. The glow was very welcome now to our dripping youths. Nat brought down all the clothes he had and all the towels, and the pair scrubbed themselves dry, and then Christmas put on some of Nat's ordinary clothes, while Nathaniel himself mounted, for lack of any other, the proud Volunteer uniform. Then Nat discovered a bottle of brandy, and they had each a glass to keep off cold, and they found that Christmas's cigar-case had kept its contents dry through all the fight with the waves and the current, and they sat one at each side of the fire and smoked, and were very cheery.

"Better not talk about this thing," said Pembroke; "people would only laugh at us."

VOL. XIV., N.S. 1875.

T

"It ought to be told," Nat answered conscientiously, "how you showed such courage, and saved my life-and I didn't deserve it of you."

"Of course any fellow who could swim was bound to do that; I don't care to have that told; we shall only look foolish."

"But I behaved so badly," Nat ruefully went on; "I was so rude, all about nothing. The truth is this, and you may laugh at me if you like I hate my occupation, and my mother was a servant once, and I keep thinking everybody is looking down on me, and I heard of you, knowing Miss Lyle, and-and-Miss Challoner and that -and I took it into my stupid head that you must look down on me too; and so I made a fool of myself."

"My good friend," Christmas said coolly, "I have only just come to England after living nearly all my life in places where people know as much about the distinctions of English society as they do of what is going on in the moon. Let me tell you that the world doesn't concern itself half as much as you think about what people say and do in London."

"But we are in London now-I mean we are in England-and that makes all the difference, you know," Nat said with sad conviction.

"It does make a difference," Christmas owned, with a consciousness that only that very day he had been thinking of the possible barricade that might arise between Sir John Challoner's daughter and himself when they were all in London. "It makes a confounded difference, and I sometimes wish I were back in San Francisco or in Japan."

"Then you won't blame a fellow too much if he sometimes loses his temper thinking of these things," Nat said. "Remember that I'm ever so much worse off than you. You are a gentleman, anyhow -I am not."

Then why don't you go where people think less of these ridiculous distinctions? Why do you stay in a place like this?"

"Where can one go?"

"Go? Anywhere. Go to Japan-go to America and get out West. What do they care for gentlemen out there?"

"I have thought of it," Nat said, rubbing up his hair with his hands. "I have dreamed of it many a night. But I have hoped for a time here when manhood would assert its proper place-I have even dreamed of helping in the coming of such a time; I do try to help it all I can."

"A man must have some fair amount of self-conceit, mustn't he,