ight that can discover a relationship between this
word and another pronounced[1] as nearly the same as the two languages
will admit of, and which gives at all events one sense, if not, as I
think, the primary one, is scarcely so eccentric as that which finds the
origin of a word signifying a loud sound, and fame, or rumor, in
"nisus"; not even _struggle_, in the sense of _contention_, an endeavour
an effort, a strain.

SAMUEL HICKSON.

St. John's Wood, June 15, 1850.

[Footnote 1: I do not think it necessary, here, to defend my
pronunciation of German; the expressions I now use being sufficient for
the purpose of my argument. I passed over CH.'s observation on this
subject, because it did not appear to me to touch the question.]

* * * * *

MORE BORROWED THOUGHTS.

O many are the poets that are sown
By nature men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and the facility divine,
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse,
Nor having e'er, as life advanced, been led
by circumstance to take the height,
The measure of themselves, &c.

Wordsworth's _Excursion_, B. i.

This admired passage has its prototype in the following from the
_Lettere di Battista Guarini_, who points to a thought of similar kind
in Dante:--

"O quante nolili ingegni si perdono che riuscerebbe mirabili [in poesia]
se dal seguir le inchinazione loro non fossero, o da loro appetiti o da
i Padri loro sviati."

Coleridge, in his _Bibliographia Literaria_, 1st ed., vol. i. p. 28.,
relates a story of some one who desired {83} to be introduced to him,
but hesitated because he asserted that he had written an epigram on "The
Ancient Mariner," which Coleridge had himself written and inserted in
_The Morning Post_, to this effect:--

"Your poem must eternal be
Dear Sir! it cannot fail;
For 'tis incomprehensible,
And without head or tail."

This was, however, only a Gadshill robbery,--stealing stolen goods. The
following epigram is said to be by Mr. Hole, in a MS. collection made by
Spence (penes me), and it appeared first in print in _Terrae Filius_,
from whence Dr. Salter copied it in his _Confusion worse Confounded_, p.
88:--

"Thy verses are eternal, O my friend!
For he who reads them, reads them to no end."

In _The Crypt_, a periodical published by the late Rev. P. Hall, vol. i.
p. 30., I find the following attributed to Coleridge, but I know not on
what authority, as it does not app