Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 17, February 23, 1850 - Various - Страница 4
NOTES
PLAGIARISMS, OR PARALLEL PASSAGES. No. 2
Оглавление[Continued from No. 11. p. 163.]
"Dans les premières 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.
