New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1881-01-23
RECOLLECTIONs OF A READER.
By CHARLES T. CONGDON.
XII.
.ACyARJSM AND COINCIDENCE,

n.
AND MIR. NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.. POPE AND
aRAY-DR. JOHNSON IN GOLDsMTH's TRAVEL
LERs AND "DEsERrED VILLAGE DEAN SWIFT
ILLUSTRATIONS OF STERNE
A recent article in o respectable English maya
zine has exhibited in rather surprising way the
indebtedness of Mr.. Tennyson to various writers,
ancient and n odern, for many OF the most Striking
of his poetical passages. Condolences and palpaDe
limitations are undoubtedly shown to be numerous.
and the general effect of the whole upon the mind
Of the ordinary reader might be doubt, ana an I'M
Just one Of Dir. Tcnnysons originality. In the first
place. 1t should he remembered that imitation OF his
predecessors has always been allowed both to the
ancient and the modern poet nor have men Of the
greatest genius disdained such assistance. The
Roman writers OF tho Augustan age were continn-
ally borrowing from the Greeks, and all that is
really excellent In Latin poetry is of Greek cast
Milton, Dryden and Pope were fond of limitations;
and SO was the author of the Elegy Written in q
Country Churchyard" az we shall see by and by.
Everybody will agree, considering the NUMBER Oh
mediocre books in the world, that naked ana uh-
deniable originality is far from being test OF
genius Perhaps the stupdest OF all are those VINO
never steal o little judicious larceny would en-
liyen their pages Why should we trouble our
selves when wo encounter fine thing, with too
much curiosity about who said it tirstf Campbell.
eAAS>'
word, of course in a complimentary sense. The
reader will remember the beautiful verse in "The
Pleasures of Hope:
"The VOLTS long howl from Oonaaska's shore"
Campbell, upon being complimented upon this line,
which is indeed noble one, frankly acknowledged
that he borrowed it from an old poem, written by
sailor. which he picked up at a street STALL Again,
the reader will recall the passage in CampbelPs
"Last Man" which has been 50 often quoted:
"All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom,
The sun himself shall die"
looking over Armstrong; art of Preserving
Health" encountered the original OF this:
"The hugo rotundity we tread grows old.
And all these worlds that roll around the sun;
The sun himself mast die"
Here is a direct borrowing without acknowledge
ment of almost an entire line, and of an important
one. I am by no means sure however, that Camp
bell committed larceny, as the lawyers say, with
malice prepense. A man may carry a line which
has pleased him in his head until he first forgets
where he found it, and then comes to imagine it his
own. As such, in the fervor of composition, he
puts it into his poem, and thinks more of the
matter until some goodnatured busybodY who
knows everything finds him out, and proclaims his
peccadillo to the gaping world Mr. Poe, who once
stole whole book, was very fond of this housing
method and of making such startling develop
ments. Mr.. Longfellow was an especial object OF
his detective skill though it was brought 10 bear
quite as rcmorselessly upon other writer's But
neither Mr.. Poe other critics of the same class
have ever for moment disturbed Mr. LOngfellOws
popularity, and still less, probably, have they
troubled his eQuanimity. If he had done no more
than 60 to great feast Of the languages and bring
them the scraps readers would be much obliged to
him: for he has given them precisely the kind of
poetry which they want; and very good OF the
kind suppose that it is
There is q curious history connected with we'll
known passage in the episode of Lavinia in the
Autumn OF Thomson's Seasons" The lines as
originally written by the author were exceedingly
commonplace:
"Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self
RsS1:s Tia sy Ss vent
By strong necessity with as serene
And pleased @ look as Patience Ger put on
To CLEAN Psemon's fields"
These were submitted to Pope, who did not like
them at all. Blank verso was not much in his
way. but he tried his hand at it and produced the
following:
"Thoughtless of beauty. she was Beauty's self.
Recluse among the close-embowering woods.
40 in the hollow breast of AEpen,ns
Beneath the shelter Of encirclDg hills
myrtle rises far from human eyes,. -,
And breathes is balmy fragrance Ger the wild.
The sweet Lavinia."
Milford gives other instances and it is said that all
Pope's corrections were adopted by Thomson. Pos
sibly Gray had this passage in his mind when he
penned the famous couplet:
"Fun many flower Is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Gray was indeed famous borrower. The alluson
to Milton in " The Progress Of P0esy":
HE passed the flaming bounds of place and time"
Is acknowledged by the poet himself to be borrowed
from q magnificent passage in Lucret,us. and 1t is
indeed not much more than literal translation OF
the Romsn's Flsmmantia m9nia mundi" Then there
is o hackneyed oouplet in Dryden's abraham and
Achitophel":
"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide"
Dryden got this from Seneca who says: Z" Nnllam
magxum ingeni~m abQae mirtura dtmento;" but
have been todd that the original idea Is somewhere
in Aristotle. It would be hard not to believe that
Pope did not have Drydens couplet in his mind
when he wrote in the Essay ON Man.:
Remembrance and reflection how allied;
What thin partitions sense from thought divide"
There was always O notion that DR.. johnson had
greatly helped DR.. Goldsmith in writing "The
traveller" and Boswell, who was bent upon
knowing everything. once asked johnson plumply
to mark with pencil the lines which he had con-
tributed. One of these was:
ITO stop toe fearful and too faint to co."
The Doctor also marked the concluding ten lines of
the poem, with the exception of two. But these
two are the finest OF them all:
"The lifted axe. the agoniznR wheel,
Luke's iron crown. and Damien's bed OF steel"
Mr. Croker suggests that Johnson's lines "could
only have been alterations or substitutions for
other lines conveying though perhaps in less efec-
two language, the same or similar sentiments" DR..
johnson also told Boswell that he furnished to
Goldsmiths Deserted Village" the concluding
conplets: