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NOTES.



"L'Alouette et ses Petits, avec le Maître d'un Champ.
Ne t'attends qu'à toi seul, c'est un commun proverbe;
Voici comme Esope le mit
         En credit."

There is nothing I am more desirous of avoiding, even in a trifle like this, than the charge of plagiarism.    I must in the present instance defend myself by stating, that so long since as April 1805, Mr. Johnson was in possession of the MS. copy of this Fable. In July 1806, a friend brought with her from London, a volume called "The Birds of Scotland, with other Poems," in which I read, what, if my fable had been first published, I might perhaps have thought very like an imitation. My lines of the Lark are:

"——————————But like a dart