, that he has struck
upon it independently, or unconsciously recalled it, supposing it his
own.

It is impossible to tell, in a great many cases, whether a comparison
which suddenly suggests itself is a new conception or a recollection. I
told you the other day that I never wrote a line of verse that seemed to
me comparatively good, but it appeared old at once, and often as if it
had been borrowed. But I confess I never suspected the above comparison
of being old, except from the fact of its obviousness. It is proper,
however, that I proceed by a formal instrument to relinquish all claim
to any property in an idea given to the world at about the time when
I had just joined the class in which Waster Thomas Moore was then a
somewhat advanced scholar.

I, therefore, in full possession of my native honesty, but knowing the
liability of all men to be elected to public office, and for that reason
feeling uncertain how soon I may be in danger of losing it, do hereby
renounce all claim to being considered the _first_ person who gave
utterance to a certain simile or comparison referred to in the
accompanying documents, and relating to the pupil of the eye on the one
part and the mind of the bigot on the other. I hereby relinquish all
glory and profit, and especially all claims to letters from
autograph collectors, founded upon my supposed property in the above
comparison,--knowing well, that, according to the laws of literature,
they who speak first hold the fee of the thing said. I do also agree
that all Editors of Cyclopedias and Biographical Dictionaries, all
Publishers of Reviews and Papers, and all Critics writing therein,
shall be at liberty to retract or qualify any opinion predicated on
the supposition that I was the sole and undisputed author of the above
comparison. But, inasmuch as I do affirm that the comparison aforesaid
was uttered by me in the firm belief that it was new and wholly my own,
and as I have good reason to think that I had never seen or heard it
when first expressed by me, and as it is well known that different
persons may independently utter the same idea,--as is evinced by that
familiar line from Donatus,--

"Pereant illi qui ante nos nostra dixcrunt,"--

now, therefore, I do request by this instrument that all well-disposed
persons will abstain from asserting or implying that I am open to any
accusation whatsoever touching the said comparison, and, if they have
so asserted or implied, that th