THE WEEKLY CAUSERIE

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 6492, 11 April 1908, Page 5

THE WEEKLY CAUSERIE

Contributions to the Weekly Causerio columns on matters of general and personal interest are invited from all readers. Queries as to the authorship of talcs, poems, songs, etc., with the replies thereto will be inserted gratis.

Corrcsnoudents are requested to write on one side only of the paper. All communications to be addressed “Edi- , tor ‘X.Z. Times/ Saturday Supplement/’ To insure insertion in following baturday s issue letters must roach this office not later* than "Wednesday of each week. IN REPLY. T. S. (Waiouru)— Subject good; working out faulty. May lick into sliopo for a future Issue. E. W. (Petono)—TLauks. Next week. J. T. (Wellington)—Will appear next week. QUERIES. W. E. (Palmerston N.) —writes: TCould you give in© tho words of alaryland.” and name of Author?” “Nemo” (Wellington)—writes: “In Hie •School Journal’ for March, there appears a poem entitled ‘Tho Children’ which has the name ‘Charles Dickens’ adhibited. Is Charles Dickons the novelist meant, and was he tho Author?”

SINCE LAST WE MET

What is a plagiarism? This question is sometimes very hard to answer right! off hand. There are plagiarisms and plagiarisms, just as there aro “eggs and oggs.” The case exposed by the “Academy” some time ago, however, was on© about which there could bo no two opinions. The editor of tho “Academy” began to read in the “Literary World”* a leading article, on “Dual Personalities/’ signed “A JN.” Ho began to read wiih interest, interest grew to wonder, wonder gave place to vague reminiscence, reminiscence begat research, and research revealed the fact that that very article had appeared in tho “Academy” lc®.* than SIX MONTHS PREVIOUSLY. Such actions are really beyond our comprehension. A man may purloin some piece of writing with th© assurance that tho chances ar© all again c t his being found out, but it does seem as if no man in his senses would steal a whole article from an issue Of a leading literary journal, and within sis montJis subsequent to its publication, send it to anocner leading literary journal as his own! Yet this thing has been done, not one©, but many times.

I remember some years ago seeing ia then well-known music-hall song-writer's name and address printed in full over the words of a song which was the pro-* duction of Air James Kelly (brother of 1 Air J. Liddell Kelly, now of the Auckland “Graphic”), and appeared in his volume of verse, entitled “The Printers' Carnival,” published in 1875. Even Koberfc Bums, the National Bard of Scotland, was guilty of a somewhat similar act, and the Kev, John Logan, wel.known to literary students as the thief — not the author—of the famous “Ode to the Cuckoo,” not content with robbing a poor dead comrade of his fame, tools to "preaching other clergymen's sermons and'afterwards actually publishing them in book form AS HIS VEKY OWN. Yet there is such a thing as innocent or unconscious plagiarism. No less a personage than the late Lord Beaconslieid, as Mr Disraeli, in the House of Commons, delivered a speech, on the death of Wellington,; a great portion of \vhlch was promptly shown to bo an exact translation of an oration by AiThiers on the death of a ‘French Alar-* shal. You may be sure the Liberal party press made all the capital it could out of the incident and denounced “Dizzy” as a barefaced plagiarist. Disraeli was able, ‘ however, to give a very satisfactory explanation. He said that it had been lus habit to copy out in his own handwriting any passage from any author, living or dead. Which struck him as/particularly good. It was also his habit, as it is of nearly all speakers and writers, to‘write .but’at random, to be 1 kept for future use, any ideas of his own as they formed in his mind. After the lapse of. years some of these two sets of notes had got mixed up, and Disraeli had mistaken the set eloquence of M. Thiers for the

RANDOM ELOQUENCE OF HIS OWN. Mr J. Cuthbert liadden, of Edinburgh, the aged musician and writer, wno, lung alter lie retried from lus word as an organist, - continued to write entertainingly of boons and booinnen, tells now ne was once denounced as a plagiarist. "I had,” he says, "copied from a magazine a clecnplioii of a residence of. Mary of Soots, and, inadvertently, Jiad unm-ted to note tn© source of authorship, very soon afterwards i visited that residence myself, and wrote <iowu in continuation of The extract, my own description of the place. Three or tour years later, I happened to be writing xor a leading- magazine an'article on ‘The Residences of Mary Queen ;of boots/ and I worked up tne wno re thing us if it were my own. it was done in perfect innocence; yet'the writer of tho ten or twelve lines that, unwittingly, x had used, very promptly charged me with plagiarism. ;ho is aead now, poor fellow, and I respect the well-known maxim; but well, as Mr Howell says, tho world Is full of idle people only too gutd to act as detectives. They please their miserable vanity, by showing their alertness, and are positively proud to bear witness against you in the COURT OF PARALLEL COLUMNS.” A very interesting article might be written under the title of k "‘When is a plagiarism not a plagiarism?” Many writers have at ono lime or another referred to .this subject, and tho consensus of opinion seems to be the same as that on the question of "When. is a rebel not a rebel?” The answer to this last, of course, is "When he succeeds." And so genius, as Mr Blunder Matthews has put it, takes by right of eminent domain, and rectifies" its frontier .by annexing outlying territory, making fruitful that which before was but a barren waste.

id it is well for our literary heritage that it is so. If Shakespeare, Uen Jonson, Kit Marlowe, Burns, and others had not exercised the right of genius to annex .and improve tho work of their forerunners, and also of their contemporaries, what a loss it had been to tho literature of the world. In literature at least there is what the Socialist calls "equal opportunity," and that is his at last who

MAKES BIST USB OF IT.

It is plagiarism to take the writings of another and nakedly produce tho same without acknowledgment; but it is not plagiarism if one takes it up, reclothes it with his own individuality and soul, and improves upon the former author's work. It is as if an artist or a sculptor had come upon tho work of a fore-runner who had attempted to picture on canvas or in stone the figure of the Goddess of Beauty, However imperfect, ho had put his best into it, and so far the work was his. Our new-comer, artist or sculptor, eeee the image, is siezed with an inspire tion, and, a few deft lines of the brush, or the cunning touch of the chisel, and, 10, the erstwhile dead image* like Jairus's daughter at the touch of Christ, gleams into life and immortality I

DB BAENAEBO,

A TRIBUTE BY ONE OF HIS BOYS. It is some time now since I left Dr Barnardo’s Home, in Limehouse. London; but I have not forgotten, and 1 trust I may never forget, the debt 1 owe to the man who is now silent *n the grave. Dr Barnai'do did for mo what he has done for thousands oi otners similarly placed. He tool: mo, out of , tho gutters of great, cynical London, and placed me where X would get the chance every creature is entitled to. _ .... Before I went info the Home nt Limestone, and while I was yot A WILD "STREET ARAB." I tasted tho bitterness of abject poverty, and experienced all the horrors attendant on my utter helplessness oaid friendless condition. 1 had hungered in tho midst of plenty, and often enough, tad been glad to crawl in and out among the stalls nt Covent Garden market in the hope that I should find some damaged fruit or vegetables with which 1 could appease my ravenous hunger lor the time being. Night after night ■ have . X tramped the interminable, bewildering streets of London seeking a place whore I could “doss" for a few hours without fear of being disturbed by the police. Youngster, os I was, I am not likely to forget tho horrors of that period, tho impressions of which, are fixed upon my mind in ineradicable characters. 1 had tried all tho numerous schemes and contrivances by means of which * the average ‘‘gutter-brat*' manages to keep out of the . grave —sometimes selling jiapors or matches, and at others hanging around Iho great hotels or railway stations,'or “Tup'ny Tubes," on the off chance of getting a tip in return for opening a cab door, or carrying a jarcel, or some such slight service. - * But none of those occufialioiis brought me in a fortune, and, more often than not, I was without tne bare necessaries of life. .Then Providence directed r.y step® Stepney-wards, and from that day I to this I have never erased to be thankful for tho more than fortunate circumstance. The

"BATHER OF NOBODY’S CHILDREN" become my father; the little man! with tho great heart became my guardian. My lot was changed, and I camA out cf tho darkness of unut ter able wretchcdne.?s into the ■ light of unalloyed hapm Another year of -tho guttor and tho iron must assuredly have entered my soul and embittered the whole of my after life. .Another year.of: tho squalor, the wretchedness, the /misery, _ and I must inevitably have passed into the ranks of the morally and mentally damned. Ami my salvation, was effected just at the right moment, as the salvation of thousands more had been, and was said still to be, by a god-liko man who J loved tho least ‘ of God's creatures .with a love and a tenderness surpassing great and beautiful. * , I can see him now as ho used to stand on the platform at .the "Edinburgh Gastle? Mission; Hall, with his hue manly face aglow with the light of high resolve, his eyes bright, and sparkling, a wonderful smile playing around the comers of tho mouth that could set so stern when occasion required, HIS ASMS OUTSTRETCHED

in mute appeal to tho hundreds who waited in breathless expectancy for him to speak. Before him a wide sea of faces, some sad and sorrowful, some defiant and hardened, and behind him jn tho vast ‘gallery, on seats rising tier aboVo tier ’to wi-thiu a few feet of the lofty roof,- - the living, breathing monument of his incalculable greatness—his boys! . . i_: Suddenly, without any previous intimation of his intention, and iff. the middle of some eloquent and impassioned passage, he would wheel sharp round on his heel and face his mammoth “family/ A thousand .boyish faces radiating a devotion their thousand undovoloped minds, were as yet incapable otr comprehending or even realising. Then* he "Would speak to them, and his tones’'were as 'the tones of a woman breathing

A WONDROUS TENDERNESS. His face would, soften visibly, and; a smile of inexpressible pathos would linger round tho coir .ere of bis mouth as, with arms outstretched, he would exhort "his children" to consecrate their young lives to the highest service possible to mortals. : • 1 , Think vyou that among those thousand boy, : xliere- ' were non© , whoso souls breathed a response to the love which shone from tho Doctor's eyes? X tell you "his boys" loved him. Tub girls loved him, his whole great "family loved him; and well they might for had he not saved them from the countless horrors inseparable from tho condition of helpless childhood, and had ho not toiled incessantly day and uught, ana endured scorn and reproach, that 10 might supply ; their wants, appeaso their hunger, cloth© their nakedao&s, and train their minds that they should experience through the long after-years non© of the ill effects of their early environment and associations ? ' }l There are thousands of "lu% children scattered '

ALL OVER THE WORLD, hi oil parts of our great Empire, .And to these the name of Barnnrdo is a sound synonymous 'yith the highest and mo«t liallovred things in life. What would have been the fate of these thousands .had there been no Dr Barnardo ?

The vision this question conjures up is of too horrible a nature to bear steadfast -contemplation, and vre turn from its ugliness to -the beauties of the. existing picture of this great man e glorious labours for helpless childhood. I have done. I have paid my slight and simple tribute to the greatness and goodness of the man who raised me from tho hell of destitution and lifted me to the heaven of his "Homes,' and to-dav I am proud of being an ‘old Barnardo boy.” HAERY PAYNE.