As a correspondent was not slow to point out, Goldsmith, if a copyist,
at all events considerably improved his model (see in particular lines 7
and 8 of the French). On the 30th of the month the late Sir William
Fraser gave it as his opinion, that, until the volume of 1719 should be
produced, the 'very inferior verses quoted' must be classed with the
fabrications of 'Father Prout,' and he instanced that very version of
the 'Burial of Sir John Moore' ('Les Funerailles de Beaumanoir') which
has recently (August 1906) been going the round of the papers once
again. No Segur volume of 1719 was, of course, forthcoming.
Kenrick, as we have already seen, had in 1767 accused Goldsmith of
taking 'Edwin and Angelina' from Percy (p. 206). Thirty years later, the
charge of plagiarism was revived in a different way when 'Raimond and
Angeline', a French translation of the same poem, appeared, as
Goldsmith's original, in a collection of Essays called 'The Quiz', 1797.
It was eventually discovered to be a translation 'from' Goldsmith by a
French poet named Leonard, who had included it in a volume dated 1792,
entitled 'Lettres de deux Amans, Habitans de Lyon' (Prior's 'Life',
1837, ii.
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