Note 2 — THE GATHERER.
Reading edition
Footnote 2
:
(return)
"There is nothing new under the sun;" Solomon was right. I had written these lines from experiencing the truth of them, and really imagined I had been the first to express, what so many must have felt; but on looking over Rogers's delicious little volume of Poems, some time after this was penned, I find he has, with his usual felicity, noted the same effect. I give his Text and Commentary; they occur in his beautiful poem, "Human Life," speaking of a girl in love, he says:
"—soon her looks the rapturous truth avow, Lovely before, oh, say how lovely now!"
On which he afterwards remarks:
"Is it not true that the young not only appear to be, but really are, most beautiful in the presence of those they love? It calls forth all their beauty."
Such a coincidence might almost induce me to exclaim with the plagiarising pedant of antiquity, "Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt!"