LITERARY RESEMBLANCE

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXXII, Issue 10466, 2 October 1894, Page 6

LITERARY RESEMBLANCE

(Detroit Free Press.) It has been asserted by a famous author that we all come into the world too late to produce anything new—that nature and life are pre-occupied, and that description and sentiment have long since been exhausted. To the same intent an eloquent lecturer has said: “ Many of the gems ot Shakspere are older than all history, J" I*. 1 *. Bulwer borrowed the incidents of his Roman stories from legends of a thousand years before. In the nations of modern Europe there have been less than three hundred distinct stories, most of which may be traced before Christianity to the other side of the Black Sea. Even our newspaper jokes are enjoying a respectable old age. A popular anecdoje is from Don Quixote, and is Spanish, but Cervantes borrowed it from the Greeks in the fourth century, and the Greeks stole it from the Egyptians hundreds of years back.” But, not to mention plagiarism or literary theft at all, there is frequently a marked resemblance between the writings of our most famous authors that is as accidental as it is unavoidable. Even Stevenson, who has been held up as a model of originality, states that he was surprised to find in Irving’s “Tales of a Traveller” the very prototype of one of his own most striking characters, “ his very voice, manner, talk, sabre cut, and sea chest.” Ho had read Irving years before, and bad apparently forgotten him, but in writing “Treasure Island ” unconsciously revived in the person ot Billy Bales, an old creation of Washington Irving’s. In another instance the same writer says, regarding a certain scene which he fondly imagined he had invented, that he was informed that the outlines of the scene, even to the names of the three principal characters, were to be found in “Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials,” which he bad doubtless read years before. It ia the frequency of such instances as these that leads to many of the charges of plagiarism preferred against our moat reputable authors, whose minds are necessarily stored with the results of wide reading, and whose apparent appropriations are quite as likely to be unconscious as intentional. As Stevenson very happily puts it —“ We authors all rearrange that matter of observed life with which our memories are charged, and the most we can mean by the word invention ia some happy cqngruity or surprise in the .manner of, arranging it.” Like Stevenson, Lord Byron admitted that it would not lie strange if coincidences were remarked as existing between his work and that of the authors he read most frequently; and certainly of all authors Byron had least occasion or need to turn plagiarist. Yet passages hearing evident marks of his acquaintance with Shakspere, Coleridge, Bickford, Grey and Lovelace are found scattered, throughout his works, and it is claimed that the theme of “ Manfred ” was clearly taken from Goethe’s “ Faust.’^ Thera are few topics or even ideas which can bo termed truly original, and writers of tbe present day can do little more than improve the diction of older authors. And of those older writers Emerson says“ The originals are not original. There is an imitation model, and suggestions to tbe very archangels, if: we knew their history.” And another Bays : “ Every good reader finds that the best thoughts of his favourite authors are as old as the Latin writers.” Bourdillon, when at Oxford, was familiar with Latin literature, and made himself famous by his eight lines, beginning:

The night has a thousand eyes, The day hut one ; Yet the light of the bright world dies With the dying sun." But not in Greek or Roman imagery can be found bo probable a source for this beautiful thought as exists in the works of the Swedish poet, Tegner, who, in the early part of our century, wrote these words : “ Honor the King; let one man rule with might. Day has but one eye, many has the night." One of the most singular instances of the expression of the same idea by authors of undoubted originality is perhaps the following : —Shakspsra in Henry V. says, “ If he be not fellow with the best king, thou shalt find him the best king of good fellows.” Pope, in his “ Dnncisd,” embodies a similar idea in this line; “A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits,” Samuel Johnson strikes out as follows: " This man I thought had been a lord among wits, but I find he is only a wit among lords.” Cowper has it; “ A fool with judges, among fools a judge.” Of Napoleon Walter Scott said; “Although too much of a soldier among sovereigns, no one could claim with better right to be a sovereign among soldiers;” while Macaulay,in his “Life of Addison,” says; “He was a rake among scholars and a scholar among rakes,” ... A striking but undoubtedly accidental resemblance baa been' rioted between Mrs Browning and Edgar A, Poe, which extends, however, to hut one line. In one of her poems the former says:— “With a rushiag stir uncertain, in the air, the purple curtain," While in “ The Raven” Poe has it ‘And the silken, sad uncertain, rustling of each purple curtain." George Herbert wrote: “No sooner is a temple built to God, but the devil builds a chapel hard by.” Burton, a contemporary, in bis “Anatomy of Melancholy,” says: “Where God bath a temple, the devil will have a chapel.” Nathaniel Drummond, a Scottish poet, put the idea in a poetic form: “ God never had a church but there, men say, The devil a chapel hath raised by some wiles. I doubted of this saw, till on a day I westward spied great Edinburgh’s Saint Giles." Half a century later Defoe expressed the idea in the form in which it is now generally quoted;

“ Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The devil always builds a chapel there."

A somewhat singular literary coincidence haa been pointed out as existing between Mrs Burnett’s “ Little Lord Fauntleroy ” and a story called "The Bed Rose Knight,” which was published in Chatterbox in the year 1883.’ In both stories titled boys come from foreign countries to ancestral homes situated in large parks. Each arrives unaccompanied by his parents. The fathers are dead. One boy is called Lord Fauntleroy, the other Sir Florence. In each home a guardian only is providedno lady appears. The boys are pictured as wearing flowing curly hair, dressing in black velvet and lace collars, and as straight and handsome. This is in all probability a mere accidental resemblance, but sufficiently odd to deserve mention under the general subject of literary resemblances. Many years ago attention was called to the resemblance in many respects between Whittier’s “ Worship of Nature ” and an old poem called “ The Temple of Nature,” which he had undoubtedly read and re-read in his early days. In “The Temple of Nature ” we have: “ The ocean heaves resistlessly by. And pours his glittering treasures forth His waves —the priesthood of the sea. Kneel on the shell-gemmed earth ” Whittier, writing also of the sea, says: “They kneel upon the sloping sand, As bends the human knee, A beautiful and tireless band. The nriesthood of the sea. They pour their glittering treasures out Which in the deep have birth.” Tennyson gave expression to a thought that the world welcomed when he wrote: “ ’Tis hotter to have loved and lost, (j Than never to have loved at all.” But prior to the appearance of " In Memoriam.” the late Lord Houghton had written a abort poem, which concludes as follows “ He who for love has undergone The worst that can befall. Is happier thousandfold than one Who never loved at all.” Again, Tennyson sadly sang: “ That o. sorrow's crown of sorrows Is remembering happier things.” But Dante had long before expressed this universal thought in “ No greater grief than to remember days Of joy,-when misery is at hand.” Attention W.s called to the strange, coincidence of thought in the final atahza 1 of poems by Whittier and Tennyson, each author comparing his own death to a sum-

mons to set sail upon the sea of eternity Whittier wrote:— “ j know the solemn monotone Of waters calling unto me ; X know from whence the airs have blown. That whisper of the eternal sea. As low my fires of driftwood burn, I hear that sea’s &pep sounds increase. And, fair in sunset ligjit, discern Its mirage-lifted isles of peace. And Tennyson, in hia exquisite “ Crossing the Bar,” wrote “ Twilight and evening bell. And, after that—the dark! And may there he no sadness of farewell When I embark; For tho’ from out our bourne of time and place The floods may beat mo far, I hope to see my pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar.”