MILTON ON "FAME."
[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR:']
SIR,—Your reviewer of Mr. Frederic Harrison's book (Spectator, December 29th, 1906), taking the author to task for his reference to Milton's verse on Fame as inimitable, does not take hint to task for. misquoting it (unless, indeed, the misquotation is the reviewer's own). The verse, of course, should run,— " The last infirmity of noble mind."
It is true that this is taken from the passage of Taeitus, which is given, but it is not so generally known that the latter had been plagiarised previously by a Latin writer in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Front° in his "Treatise on Eloquence," which with some others of his writings was discovered in 1815, says: " Novissimam homini sapientiam colenti omit:alum est gloriae cunido. Id novissime exuitnr." Love of fame is the last cloak to be doffed even by the wise Man, who then, I suppose, in his austere nakedness, " in lieu of a surtout would wrap himself up in his virtue."—I am, Sir, Scc.,
REGINALD HAINES.
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