Among the epigrams of Leonidas of Tarentum, in the Greek Anthology, is
one which becomes especially interesting if we take into account the
writer’s history, and bear in mind that he had experimental knowledge of
exile, from having been carried away captive by Pyrrhus. Its subject is
“Home, sweet home.”
Cling to thy home! if there the meanest shed
Yield thee a hearth and shelter for thy head,
And some poor pot with vegetables stored
Be all that heaven allots thee for a board,
Unsavory bread, and herbs that scatter’d grow
Wild on the river bank or mountain brow,—
Yet e’en this cheerless mansion shall provide
More heart’s repose than all the world beside.
No one can help comparing this with Goldsmith’s “Traveller”:
Thus every good his native wilds impart
Imprints the patriot passion on his heart;
And e’en those hills that round his mansion rise,
Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies.
Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms,
And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms, etc.,
and with the even more familiar lines of the same poem, commencing with
The shuddering tenant of the frigid zone.
The attention of Prof. Blackie and other literary and patriotic
Scotchmen has been called to the following communication addressed by
Mr. J. A. Neale to _Notes and Queries_: A somewhat extensive study of
English literature has revealed to me many instances of imitation and
plagiarism; but I have never met with a more remarkable example than
this afforded by the following epitaph, published in an old edition of
“Camden’s Remains,” and a poem by Burns entitled “The Joyful Widower.” I
give the epitaph and the poem in full.
One, to show the good opinion he had of his wife’s soul departed, who in
her lifetime was a notorious shrew, writes upon her this epitaph:
We lived near one-and-twenty year
As man and wife together:
I could not stay her longer here,
She’s gone, I know not whither.
But did I know, I do protest
(I speak it not to flatter)
Of all the women in the world,
I swear I’d ne’er come at her.
Her body is bestowed well,
This handsome grave doth hide her;
And sure her soul is not in hell,
The devil could ne’er abide her.
But I suppose she’d soar’d aloft,
For in the late great thunder
Methought I heard her very voice,
Rending the clouds asunder.