[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Undei the above heading
in this week's issue a corres- pondent justly remarks that " it is more than piobable that Macaulay had read Volney's Ruins." If so his attention must have been arrested by the • noble passage commencing " Qui sait si sur les rives de la Seine, de la Tamise." Moreover, it is very unlikely he did not know, in 1840, that the idea had then recently been made commonplace by incorporation in _a pOPular novel (Frank Mildmay, 1829). Captain Marryat . placed his traveller on Primrose Hill. to survey the ruins of London. Macaulay went back to the river with. Volney, but it' is probable that he no more thought of plagiarism than if he had been paraphrasing' a proverb. H.e. might have been vastly amused to-day at the 'ascription to him, by all sorts and conditions of writers, of originality -in the Matter.—I ami
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