Page:Johnson - Rambler 3.djvu/240

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230
THE RAMBLER.
N° 143.

may be with great justice suspected whenever they are found a second time. Thus Waller probably owed to Grotius an elegant compliment:

Here lies the learned Savil's heir,
So early wise, and lasting fair,
That none, except her years they told,
Thought her a child, or thought her old. Waller.

Unica lux saecli, genitoris gloria, nemo
Quem puerum, nemo credidit esse senem. Grot.

The age's miracle, his father's joy!
Nor old you would pronounce him, nor a boy. F. Lewis.

And Prior was indebted for a pretty illustration to Alleyne's poetical history of Henry the Seventh:

For nought but light itself, itself can shew,
And only kings can write, what kings can do. Alleyne.

Your musick's pow'r, your musick must disclose,
For what light is, 'tis only light that shews. Prior.

And with yet more certainty may the same writer be censured, for endeavouring the clandestine appropriation of a thought which he borrowed, surely without thinking himself disgraced, from an epigram of Plato:

Τῆ Παφίῃ τὸ κάτοπτρον· ἔπει τοίη μὲν ὁρᾶσθαι
Οὐκ ἐθέλω, ὅιη δ' ἧν πάρος, οὐ δυναμαι.

Venus, take my votive glass,
Since I am not what I was;
What from this day I shall be,
Venus, let me never see.