Dublin.
_Borrowed Thoughts_ (Vol. vii., p. 203.).--The thought which ERICA shows
has been used by Butler and Macaulay is a grain from an often-pillaged
granary; a tag of yarn from a piece of cloth used ever since its make for
darning and patching; a drop of honey from a hive round which robber-bees
and predatory wasps have never ceased to wander,--the _Anatomy of
Melancholy_:
"Though there were giants of old in physic and philosophy, yet I say
with Didacus Stella[2], 'a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant
may see farther than a giant himself.' I may likely add, alter, and see
farther than my predecessors; and it is no greater prejudice for me to
indite after others, than for Ælianus Montaltus, that famous physician,
to write _De Morbis Capitis_, after Jason Pratensis," &c.
The pagination (that of Tegg's edition, 1849) will not guide those who with
Elia sicken at the profanity of "unearthing the bones of that fantastic old
great man," and know not a "sight more heartless" than the reprint of his
_Opus_.