LUCRETIUS OR SCOTT? [To run Enrros or THE "SPECTATOR.n
Srn,—Will you allow me to "break a lance" on a passage in a review of a recent work embodying Tennyson's observations in natural science which appeared in the last number of your journal ? Your reviewer says :—
"Some of the very observations which Sir Norman Lockyer notes in Tennyson are avowedly borrowed from Lucretius, though no doubt observed by the English poet again for himself. Such is the observation of the dog who dreams, and in his sleep 'With inward yelp and restless forefoot plies His function of the woodland.'" Now I would submit that if Tennyson is to be charged with borrowing what is, after all, a fairly common fireside obser- vation, he is more likely to have "owed" the inspiration to
the following vigorous lines from the first canto of the "lay of the Last Minstrel" :—
"The stag hounds weary with the chase, Lay stretched upon the rushy floor, And urged, in dreams, the forest race From Teviot Stone to Eskdale Moor!'
My championship of "The Wizard of the North" would fall, of course, if your reviewer can justify the use of the word "avowedly," which I have italicised in the passage quoted; but has Tennyson admitted anywhere in his works or corre-
spondence that he borrowed this observation from the Roman
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