Note 380 — Chapter VI · [1817-1820.]
Reading edition
Life and Works, IV., 262-3. It may be worth while to note this curious and characteristic passage, as an example of what Byron has been so often charged with—unacknowledged, (and perhaps unconscious) plagiarisms from authors or works which are but little known. The idea of “a universal interpreter at the time of the tower of Babel,” is copied literally from Pope’s metrical version of the second satire of Dr. Donne, to the hero of which the same illustration is applied, in exactly the same way.
“Thus others’ talents having nicely shown, He came by sure transition to his own; Till I cried out: ‘You prove yourself so able, Pity you was not druggerman [dragoman] at Babel! For had they found a linguist half so good, I make no question but the Tower had stood.’”