A LITERARY PARALLEL.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR•"I
SIR,—It would be interesting to know how far Wordsworth
may have been influenced, consciously or unconsciously, in his celebrated " Ode on Intimations of Immortality " by his reading of Cicero and Plato. In the stanzas commencing with the
line—
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting," and concluding with the lines- " As if his whole vocation, Were endless imitation," we have a remarkable parallel to a corresponding passage in the "De Senectute," chap. 21. The same main argument in favour of immortality on the basis of recollections in infancy is main- tained throughout, and the thought and phraseology are in several instances remarkably similar. One or two other passages where there is a slight divergency of thought and metaphor may be worth noting. C.f.
"Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither " and "quasi terram videre videar aliquandoque in portum ex longa navigatione esse venturus " ; cf. also, by way of con- trast, "Have adulescentes mihi mori sic videntur ut cum aquae multitudine flammae vie opprimitur " with the well- known lines from the " Excursion "- " The good die first, And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the socket."
Certainly the " Ode on Intimations of Immortality" and the "De Senectute" would probably offer as fruitful a soil as could be found to the student in search of parallel passages.—I am, Cirencester.
Previous page
