LITERARY BORROWING.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 104, 25 January 1908, Page 13

LITERARY BORROWING.

A contributor discussed on this .page last week the plagiarisms of Kipling. Thoso who aro interested 1 in ; the litoraturo of plagiary will find matter for thought, and perhaps disagreement, in the following , remarks m tho "Manchester Guardian"

• Someone of tho namo of Frank H.i Chase contributes to tho Now York "Nation" a letter of a sort that is exquisitely irritating to lovers of poetry. - It relates 'to literary borrowing, and .sOQ)j3. : to bring in Wordsworth debtor to Gfty ,in rospeot of an imago in. his poem to -"The Skylark." , Tho hunting for "cchoos" is; rather a poor game. Of .those who begin, to keep a book of "parallol passages"—Professor Churton Collins's "Illustrations to Tennyson" is a glorified • instance —most Soon desist-from. a perception of the futility of the task. Somo, however, persist and como to plumo themselves on thoir flair for a-plagiarism. Of those there is no ,more conspicuous instanco thati'Edgar Allan'Poe. His "Marginalia" even'more than, his set" essays show to what an extent his inind was preoccupied with this literary feature. He finds so many tracks of others in Longfellow's snow that ho dubs him tho "most audacious imitator in :America." Ho finds tho "New Monthly" plagiarising from Channing and the "Monthly Register" from D'lsraeli, and catches flagrante delicto Mr. George Hill, of New York,' committing a larceny upon tho literary property of Mr. Edward C. Pinckney, of Baltimore. It.is a curious idiosyncrasy, and is with difficulty excused even by 'tho'fastidious originality of Poo's own vein and by the fact that as a rule his eye does not play him falsu in tho mattor. Mr. Chase's eye; however, does play him false. The similarity between the two passagos ho quotes ■ is so slight that borrowing is a gratuitous hypothesis. Hero arc Gay's lines;— : .v. ,

So the.sweet/lark high .poiscd in air Shutß close .his-piijioiis fo' his breast' ' If chance'his'mate's dhriir call'he' hear, And drops' at once into her nest. ; Here,, on tho. other hand, aro "Wordsworth's:— ; . .. , 1 ,

Or, while the wings aspire,- are heart and eyo Both • with thy nest upon tho dewy ground ? Thy nest winch thou canst drop'into at will, Those quivering wings composed, that music . still.

The "arm" of coincidence 1 need not be very "long" to account for the verbal resemblances here. It would-of course bo piquant to find that Gay, a leader in the Pope school —"detestation ■ of which, Mr. Chaso assures us, was a "cardinal principle of the WordsWorthiau creed"—had beon. robbed of, an imago by the , great Lake poot. But one might far more reasonably believe such an impossibility as that Burns, tho most spontaneous and natural of poets, when ho wrote 1 : •

Auld Nature swears the lovely Dears Her noblest' work she classes, 0, Her prentice ban' she try'di on man An, thon she made tho lasses, 0, was borrowing from tho affected nnd artificial John.Lyly, who in his "Euphues" wrote, "Artificers are wont in their last works to oxcieil themselves—yea, God, when ho had made all things, at the last made man as most perfect, thinking nothing could Iks framed moro excellent; yet after him ho created a'woman; the express Image of Eternitie, the Iyvcly picture of . Nature, the oncly Steele glaßse for man 'to beholdo hys infirmities, by comparingo them wyth woemens perfections."