. The headings
begin of God, of Heaven, of Angels, &c.,--and then of vertue, of peace,
of truth, &c., and afterwards of love, of jealousie, of hate, of beauty,
of flattery, &c., &c.,--all being aphoristic quotations from ancient
authors. As before stated, the whole was unseen by me until nearly
thirty years after I had published my independent essays on the same
theses much in a similar key."

This is a parallel case to the recent statement in a printed book with
characteristic illustrations respecting the non-originality of Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress; and Milton's Paradise Lost has been similarly
disparaged, Mr. Plummer Ward having written and shown to me a pamphlet
by himself to prove that some Italian poem seen by Milton in youth
preceded him on the same lines;--while Mr. Geikie quotes from the
Anglo-Saxon Caedmon papers nearly identical with some in Paradise Lost.
But there is no end to assertions of this sort, impugning authorial
honesty and originality: when authors write on the same topics and with
much the same stock of words and ideas both religious and educational,
it is only a marvel that the thoughts and writings of men do not oftener
collide, and seem to be plagiaristic reproductions. I have spoken of all
this at length, that if any one hereafter finds this "Politeuphuia" in
the British Museum (which is welcome to have my copy if it lacks one),
and years hence accuses my innocence of having stolen from it, he may
know that I have thus taken the bull by the horns and twisted him over.

The last anecdote I shall now inflict upon my reader in this connection
is as follows:--

One James Orton, an American gentleman whom I have never seen that I
know of (unless by possibility in some one of the crowds met
anonymously, before whom I may have read in public) was kind enough many
years ago to publish a beautifully printed and illustrated volume "The
Proverbialist and the Poet," whereof he sent me two copies; but lacking
his address, probably with the delicate object of preventing an
acknowledgment; and I am almost ashamed to state that his whole book in
different inks combines the threefold wisdoms of King Solomon, William
Shakespeare, and Martin Tupper; the title-page being decorated in
colours with views of the Temple, Stratford-on-Avon, and Albury House!
If I ventured to quote the Preface, it would beat even this as the
climax of fulsome flattery, and I think that my friends of the Comic
Press who have done