The idea of metempsychosis is perhaps the most
ancient dogma of the known universe, and it still reigns in a large part
of India and China.
_MILTON, ON THE REPROACH OF PLAGIARISM AGAINST_
Some people have accused Milton of having taken his poem from the
tragedy of "The Banishment of Adam" by Grotius, and from the "Sarcotis"
of the Jesuit Masenius, printed at Cologne in 1654 and in 1661, long
before Milton gave his "Paradise Lost."
As regards Grotius, it was well enough known in England that Milton had
carried into his epic English poem a few Latin verses from the tragedy
of "Adam." It is in no wise to be a plagiarist to enrich one's language
with the beauties of a foreign language. No one accused Euripides of
plagiarism for having imitated in one of the choruses of "Iphigenia" the
second book of the Iliad; on the contrary, people were very grateful to
him for this imitation, which they regarded as a homage rendered to
Homer on the Athenian stage.
Virgil never suffered a reproach for having happily imitated, in the
AEneid, a hundred verses by the first of Greek poets.
Against Milton the accusation was pushed a little further. A Scot, Will
Lauder by name, very attached to the memory of Charles I., whom Milton
had insulted with the most uncouth animosity, thought himself entitled
to dishonour the memory of this monarch's accuser.
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