"I say, continuing, that long before unto the foot of that high tower we came, our eyes unto its summit upward went, cause of two flamelets that we saw there placed; while signal back another gave from far; so far the eye a glimpse could hardly catch. Then I to the Sea of all wisdom turned, and said: What sayeth this and what replies that other fire? And who are they that made it?"
We open again in Cantos Nine and Ten, and find a like resemblance between Dr. Carlyle's prose and Mr. Peabody's metre; but we have perhaps quoted enough to enable our readers to form a just idea of the latter person's "labor and plodding." It is not, however, in the text alone that the resemblance exists. J. C. Peabody's notes bear a striking conformity to Dr. Carlyle's. There are fourteen notes to the Second Canto in Mr. Peabody's book,--_all_ taken, with more or less unimportant alteration and addition, from Dr. Carlyle, without acknowledgment. Of the twelve notes to Canto Eight, nine are, with little change, from Dr. Carlyle. We have compared no farther; _ex uno omnes_. Now and then Mr. Peabody gives us a note of his own. In the First Canto, for instance; he explains the allegorical greyhound as "A looked for reformer. 'The Coming Man.'" The appropriateness and elegance of which commentary will be manifest to all readers familiar with the allusion. In the Fourth Canto, where Virgil speaks of the condition of the souls in limbo, our professed translator says: "Dante says this in bitter irony. He ill brooks the narrow bigotry of the Church," etc. etc., showing an utter ignorance of Dante's real adherence to the doctrine of the Church. He has here read Dr. Carlyle's note with less attention than usual; for a quotation contained in it from the "De Monarchià" would have set him right. The quotation is, however, in Latin, and though Mr. Peabody has transferred many quotations from the "Aeneid" (through Dr. Carlyle) to his own notes, they are often so printed as not to impress one with a strong sense of his familiarity with the Latin language. We give one instance for the sake of illustration. On page 40 appear the following lines:--
Terribili squarlore Charon eni plurina mento Canities inculta jucet; staut lumina flaurina