BOLTON CORNEY.

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PLAGIARISMS, OR PARALLEL PASSAGES.  NO. 2.

[CONTINUED FROM NO. 11.  P. 163.]

    “Dans les premieres passions les femmes aiment l’amant; dans
    les autres elles aiment l’amour.”—­La Rouchefoucauld, Max.
    494.

  “In her first passions woman loves her lover,
  In all the others all she loves is love,
  Which grows a habit she can ne’er get over,
  And fits her loosely—­like an easy glove,” etc.

  Don Juan, canto iii. st. iii.

There is no note on this passage; but on the concluding lines of the very next stanza,

  “Although, no doubt, her first of love affairs
  Is that to which her heart is wholly granted;
  Yet there are some, they say, who have had none,
  But those who have ne’er end with only one,

we have the following editorial comment:—­“These two lines are a versification of a saying of Montaigne.” (!!!) The saying is not by Montaigne, but by La Rochefoucauld:—­

    “On peut trouver des femmes qui n’ont jamais eu de galanterie;
    mais il est rare d’en trouver qui n’en aient jamais eu
    qu’une.”—­Max. 73.

Byron borrows the same idea again:—­

“Writing grows a habit, like a woman’s gallantry.  There are women who have had no intrigue, but few who have had but one only; so there are millions of men who have never written a book, but few who have written only one.”—­Observations upon an Article in Blackwood’s Magazine; Byron’s Works, vol. xv. p. 87, Moore’s Edition, 17 vols duod.  London, 1833.

Both the silence of the author, and the blunder of his editor, seem to me to prove that Les Maximes are not as generally known and studied as they deserve to be.

MELANION.

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ST. ANTHOLIN’S.

Your correspondent MR. RIMBAULT (No. 12.) has made rather a grave charge against my predecessors in office as churchwardens and overseers of this parish; and although, I regret to say, such accusations of unjust stewardship and dereliction of duty are frequently and with justice imputed to some parish officers, yet I am happy to be able, in this instance, to remove the stigma which would otherwise attach to those of St. Antholin.  The churchwardens’ accounts are in good preservation, and present (in an unbroken series) the parish expenditure for nearly three centuries.

Mr. Rimbault has doubtless been misled by some error in the description of the MSS. in Mr. Thorpe’s catalogue (as advertised by him for sale), which were probably merely extracts from the original records.

The first volume commences with the year 1574, and finishes in 1708; the accounts are all written at the time of their respective dates, and regularly signed by the auditors then and there present as correct.