Under the head of “_Random Thoughts_,” “_Odds and Ends_,” “_Stray
Leaves_,” “_Scraps_,” “_Brevities_,” and a variety of similar titles,
we occasionally meet, in periodicals and elsewhere, with papers of
rich interest and value—the result, in some cases, of much thought and
more research, expended, however, at a manifest disadvantage, if we
regard merely the estimate which the public are willing to set upon
such articles. It sometimes occurs that in papers of this nature may
be found a collective mass of general, but more usually of classical
erudition, which, if dexterously besprinkled over a proper surface of
narrative, would be sufficient to make the fortunes of one or two
hundred ordinary novelists in these our good days, when all heroes and
heroines are necessarily men and women of “extensive acquirements.”
But, for the most part, these “_Brevities_,” &c. are either piecemeal
cullings at second hand, from a variety of sources hidden or supposed
to be hidden, or more audacious pilferings from those vast storehouses
of brief facts, memoranda, and opinions in general literature, which
are so abundant in all the principal libraries of Germany and France.
Of the former species, the _Koran_ of Lawrence Sterne is, at the same
time, one of the most consummately impudent and silly; and it may well
be doubted whether a single paragraph of any merit in the whole of it
may not be found, _nearly verbatim_, in the works of some one of his
{574} immediate cotemporaries. If the _Lacon_ of Mr. Colton is any
better, its superiority consists altogether in a deeper ingenuity in
disguising his stolen wares, and in that prescriptive right of the
strongest which, time out of mind, has decided upon calling every
Napoleon a conqueror, and every Dick Turpin a thief. Seneca;
Machiavelli;[1] Balzac, the author of “La Maniere de bien Penser;”
Bielfeld, the German, who wrote, in French, “Les Premiers Traits de
L'Erudition Universelle;” Rochefoucault; Bacon; Bolingbroke; and
especially Burdon, of “Materials for Thinking” memory, possess, among
them, indisputable claims to the ownership of nearly every thing worth
owning in the book.
[Footnote 1: It is remarkable that much of what Colton has stolen from
Machiavelli, was previously stolen by Machiavelli from Plutarch. A MS.
book of the _Apophthegms of the Ancients_, by this latter writer,
having fallen into Machiavelli's hands, he put them nearly all into
the mouth of his hero, Castrucio Castricani.]
Of the latter species of theft, we see frequent specimens in the
continental magazines of Europe, and occasionally meet with them even
in the lower class of periodicals in Great Britain. These specimens
are usually extracts, by wholesale, from such works as the
“Bibliotheque des Memorabilia Literaria,” the “Recueil des Bons
Pensées,” the “Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses,” the “Literary
Memoirs” of Sallengré, the “Melanges Literaires” of Suard and André,
or the “Pieces Interressantes et peu Connues” of La Place. D'Israeli's
“Curiosities of Literature,” “Literary Character,” and “Calamities of
Authors,” have, of late years, proved exceedingly convenient to some
little American pilferers in this line, but are now becoming too
generally known to allow much hope of their good things being any
longer appropriated with impunity.
Such collections, as those of which we have been speaking, are usually
entertaining in themselves, and, for the most part, we relish every
thing about them save their pretensions to originality. In offering,
ourselves, something of the kind to the readers of the Messenger, we
wish to be understood as disclaiming, in a great degree, every such
pretension. Most of the following article is original, and will be
readily recognized as such by the classical and general reader—some
portions of it may have been written down in the words, or nearly in
the words, of the primitive authorities. The whole is taken from a
confused mass of marginal notes, and entries in a common-place-book.
No certain arrangement has been considered necessary; and, indeed, so
heterogeneous a farrago it would have been an endless task to
methodize. We have chosen the heading _Pinakidia_, or Tablets, as one
sufficiently comprehensive. It was used, for a somewhat similar
purpose, by Dionysius of Harlicarnassus.
* * * * *
The whole of Bulwer's elaborate argument on the immortality of the
soul, which he has put into the mouth of the “Ambitious Student,” may
be confuted through the author's omission of one particular point in
his summary of the attributes of Deity—a point which we cannot believe
omitted altogether through accident. A single link is deficient in the
chain—but the chain is worthless without it. No man doubts the
immortality of the soul—yet of all truths this truth of immortality is
the most difficult to prove by any mere series of syllogisms. We would
refer our readers to the argument here mentioned.
* * * * *
The rude rough wild waste has its power to please,
a line in one Mr. Odiorne's poem, “The Progress of Refinement,” is
pronounced by the American author of a book entitled “Ante-Diluvian
Antiquities,” “the very best alliteration in all poetry.”
* * * * *
The _Turkish Spy_ is the original of many similar works—among the best
of which are Montesquieu's _Persian Letters_, and the _British Spy_ of
our own Wirt. It was written undoubtedly by John Paul Marana, an
Italian, _in_ Italian, but probably was first published in French. Dr.
Johnson, who saw only an English translation, supposed it an English
work. Marana died in 1693.
* * * * *