(Cf. prefatory note to 'Memoirs of M. de Voltaire'
in Gibbs's 'Works of Oliver Goldsmith', 1885, iv. 2.)
[footnote] *It had previously appeared as an extempore by a
correspondent in the 'Weekly Magazine', Edin., August 12, 1773 ('Notes
and Queries', February 14, 1880).
Forster says further, in a note, 'The original...is the epitaph on "La
Mort du Sieur Etienne":--
Il est au bout de ses travaux,
Il a passe, le Sieur Etienne;
En ce monde il eut tant des maux
Qu'on ne croit pas qu'il revienne.
With this perhaps Goldsmith was familiar, and had therefore less scruple
in laying felonious hands on the epigram in the 'Miscellanies' (Swift,
xiii. 372):--
Well, then, poor G___ lies underground!
So there's an end of honest Jack.
So little justice here he found,
'Tis ten to one he'll ne'er come back.'
Mr. Forster's 'felonious hands' recalls a passage in Goldsmith's 'Life
of Parnell', 1770, in which, although himself an habitual sinner in this
way, he comments gravely upon the practice of plagiarism:-- 'It was the
fashion with the wits of the last age, to conceal the places from whence
they took their hints or their subjects.
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