PLAGIARISMS, OR PARALLEL PASSAGES

I have placed this title in my note-books, more than one instance of
similarity of thought, incident, or expression that I have met with
during a somewhat desultory course of reading. These instances I shall
take the liberty of laying before you from time to time, leaving you and
your readers to decide whether such similarity be the effect of
_accident_ or _design_; but I flatter myself that they may be accepted
as _parallel passages_ and _illustrations_, even by those who may differ
from me in the opinion I have formed on the relation which my "loci
inter se comparandi" bear to each other.

In Lady Blessington's _Conversations with Lord Byron_, pages 176, 177.,
the poet is represented as stating that the lines--

"While Memory, with more than Egypt's art,
Embalming all the sorrows of the heart,
Sits at the altar which she raised to woe,
And feeds the source whence tears eternal flow!"

suggested to his mind, "by an unaccountable and incomprehensible power
of association," the thought--

"Memory, the mirror which affliction dashes to the earth, and,
looking down upon the fragments, only beholds the reflection
multiplied."

afterwards apparently embodied in _Childe Harold_, iii. 33.