San Andreas independent., 1858-04-24
About Plagiarism.

For he that thinks to say the SOUL he that thinks the
soul is sain
Are fondy both alike deceived it is not sain it sayeth
not;
1t is not born, it does not die past, present future
knows it not;
Ancient eternal and unchanged, 1t dies not with the
dying fiame
Who knows it incorruptib and everlasting and unborn
What heeds he whether he may say or fall himself in
battle slain?
This translation may be found in an article
on India, in the Biblotheca Sacra for 1852
We take the above from the poetic COL
umn on the fourth page of the Alta California
Of April 10th. We do not know who was the
author of the fortunate discovery it contains j;
but inasmuch as we deem it mean fling at
Mr.. R. ". Emerson, we shall avail ourselves
of the privilege it invites for refutation as
ing epidemic plagiarism.
We have never seen the epic "Mahabhratta," !"
nor are we able to read the Hindoo tongue if
we had seen it; but in order to be able to ex-
culpate Mr.. Emerson from the odium of the
charge, above made, we shall merely present
n few sentences from different well-known
authors, written at different times within the
last five hundred years by which it will ap-
pear that were the genius of our great poets
submitted to the miserable tests which the
| Judgment of the above writer thinks adapted
to this case, we should, doubtless, convict
nearly all of them of plagiarism. 1t is posi-
BILE for two men to originate the same idea,
and give force and expression to it by the
same language and metaphor Before US is
Mr.. Cary's translation of Dante's @ Vision,
written in the Italian language, in the first ten
years of the fourteenth century, and about
three hundred and sixty years prior to the
q Paradise Lost" of Milton. Each cf these
authors has the sublime reputation of the first
rank among the poets of their respective Ian
guages the plan and argument of each work
is marked by a singular coincidence of con-
cepton and refection-a desire to expound
the mysteries of future state each work is
characterized by profound learning and classic
meta phor, and bears the unmstakable marks
of great genius, that would at once stamp the
charge of plagiarism against either of them as
absurd.
Let US now proceed to notice the similarity
of expression between these two great authors.
In describing the suffering of souls in the re-
gion of Maeboge on page l95 of the Vision,
Dante says
| ." AS were the torment if each lazer-louse
OF Vadichiana in tie sutry time,
TwiXt July and September with the isle
Sardinia and Marennas pestilent fen
Had heaped their maladies all in one foss
Together; such was the torment
Milton, in paradise Lost" book xG, desert
bing similar subject says
Immediately place
Before their eyes appeared, sad, nosome. dark,
lGzer-house it seemed, wherein laid
Numbers of all diseased, all malades, &c.
Again, Dante in his "Purgatory," page 247,
describing the flight of the spirits, says:
"Ne'er saw fl. Try vapors with such speed
Cut through the serene air at fall of night,
Nor August clouds athwart the setting sun,
That upward, thes, did not in shorter space
Return.
", says:
'Swift a shooting star
In Autumn thwarts the night, when vapors fired
Impress the air, &c.
Dante puts the following language into the
Acheron:
81 come to take you to the other Shore across
Into eternal darkness, there to dwell
In fierce heat and in ice.'
Milton describing the tortureS of the dam
ned, says:
"The bitter change of
Fierce extremes, extremes by change fierce,
From beds OF raging fire to sarve in ice.-P L., b. II
Here are some more startling simiitudes:
" Hear the vesper bell from far.-Dante
3" l hear the far-of curfue sound.-Mit. Penseroso.
" That seems to mourn for the expiring day-Dante.
The Curfew tolls; the knell of parting day-Gray.
These would seem to relate only to expres-
sion; but a little reflection, and a comparison
of the contexts to the passages quoted, con-
vinces us that there was also nice similitude
of thought And so we might proceed to in
stance many more condolences but for the
present purpose the foregoing may suffice
No one at this day, after the encomiums o.
Addison and Maeauley, supported by the uni
versal homage of the literature of the las
century, will have the audacity to charge the
author of Paradise Lost with plagiarism
Yet the sapience of this agei wonderful and
Emerson has been convicted on less evidence
than is cited above.
Mr.. Gray was nineteen years in finishing hi;
immortal Elegy." 1t may be readily suppo-
sed that in a composition of only one hundred
and twenty EIGHT lines, on which so much
reflection, refined taste, and genius had beer
exercised for so long a time, the author would
not have wrecked his work on the vulgar rock
of piracy. Yet the Elegy" would seem tc
be in peril from these literary informers-thess
i" stool-pigeons" on plagiarism, who Judge the
merit and honor of an author by the same
mean and narrow laws which regulate theil
own principles and understanding
In "As You Like It," Act II, scene lst
Shakespeare makes one of his characters say
speaking of the melancholy Jaques":
"To-day nv lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal beside him as he lay along
Under an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along that way.
In the Elegy" occurs stanza embracing
the very same train of thought, conveyed tc
our minds through the medium of the same
natural objects, differing from Shakespeare only
I in the rhvme: