Knoxville weekly chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1875, 1872-12-25
"THE LOST ARTS,
All Wen borrowers, as shown by wend II
Phillips.

IN his lecture on the Lost Arts,U Wen
dell Phillips undertakes to show in effect
that there is but little that is new under
the sun, and that while we flatter ourselves
about the superiority of our age, we are in
fact, in many respects, far behind the peo-
pie who inhabited the far East centuries
ago. AS to our literature, he says:
Well, now the very choice of phrases
betrays n confession of inferiority, and you
see it again creeps out in the amount we
borrow. Take the whole range of imagi-
native Literature and we are all wholesale
borrowers. In every matter that relates
to invention-to use, or beauty, or form
we are borrowers.
You may glance around the furniture of
the palaces in Europe, and you may gather
all these utensils of art or use, and when
you have fixed the shape and forms in
your mind, will take you into the Mu-
scum of Naples, which gathers all remains
of the domestic life of the Romans, and
you shall not find a single one of these
modern forms of art or beauty or use that
was not anticipated there. We have hard
ly added one single line or sweep of beauty
to the antique.
Take the stories of Shakespeare, who
has, perhaps, written his forty odd plays.
some are historical. The rest, .wU-thirds
OF them, he did not stop to invent, but he
found them. These he clutched, ready
made to his hand, from the Italian novel
lists, who had taken them before from the
East. Cinderella and her slipper is older
than all history, like half dozen other
baby legends. The annals of the world do
not go back far enough to tell us from
where they first came.
All the boys plays, like everything that
amuses the child in the open air, are Ash,
attic. RawlinsOn will show YOU that they
came somewhere from the banks of the
Ganges or the suburbs of Damascus. Bull
wer borrowed the incidents of his Roman
stories from legends of thousand years
before. Indeed, Dunloch, who has grouped
the history of the novels of all Europe into
one essay, says that in the nations of mod
ern Europe there have been go or 800 dis.
tinct stories.
He says at least 200 of these may be
traced before Christianity, to the other
side of the Black Sea. If this were my
topic, which it is not, might tell you that
even our newspaper jokes are enjoying
very respectable old age. Take Maria
Edgeworth's essay on Irish bulls and the
laughable mistakes of the Irish.
Even the tale which either Maria Edge
worth or her father thought the best is that
famous story of man writing letter as
follows
" My DEAR FRIEND: would write YOU
more in detail, more infinitely, if there
was not an impudent fellow looking over
my shoulder reading every word" Ono,
you iie-Ive not read word you have
written n) Laughter
This is an Irish bull, still it is very old
one. IL is only $50 years older than the
New Testament. Horace Walpole dis
scented from Richard Lowell Edgeworth
and thought the other Irish bull was the
best-of the man who said: 81 would
have been very handsome man, but they
changed me in the cradle" [Great laugh
ter.
That comes from Don QuiXote, and is
Spanish, but Ceramics borrowed it from
the Greeks in the fourth century, and the
Greeks stole it from the Egyptians huns
dreds of years back,