Note 52:1 — LINES[51:1]
Reading edition
Note to line 57. Poems, 1796, pp. 183-5:—I entreat the Public's pardon for having carelessly suffered to be printed such intolerable stuff as this and the thirteen following lines. They have not the merit even of originality: as every thought is to be found in the Greek Epigrams. The lines in this poem from the 27th to the 36th, I have been told are a palpable imitation of the passage from the 355th to the 370th line of the Pleasures of Memory Part 3. I do not perceive so striking a similarity between the two passages; at all events I had written the Effusion several years before I had seen Mr Rogers' Poem.—It may be proper to remark that the tale of Florio in the 'Pleasures of Memory' is to be found in Lochleven, a poem of great merit by Michael Bruce.—In Mr Rogers' Poem[52:A] the names are Florio and Julia; in the Lochleven Lomond and Levina—and this is all the difference. We seize the opportunity of transcribing from the Lochleven of Bruce the following exquisite passage, expressing the effects of a fine day on the human heart.
Fat on the plain, and mountain's sunny side Large droves of oxen and the fleecy flocks Feed undisturb'd; and fill the echoing air With Music grateful to their [the] Master's ear. The Traveller stops and gazes round and round O'er all the plains [scenes] that animate his heart With mirth and music. Even the mendicant Bow-bent with age, that on the old gray stone Sole-sitting suns him in the public way, Feels his heart leap, and to himself he sings.
[Poems by Michael Bruce, 1796, p. 94.]
[52:A] For Coleridge's retractation of the charge of plagiarism and apology to Rogers see 'Advertisement to Supplement of 1797', pp. 244, 245.