The San Francisco call., 1898-11-20
Did Milton Crib From Vondel?
Latest Controveray Jh> Is Agitating the Critics.

tion of the 'Lucifer' may reasonaoly expect another run.
 It is impossible to doubt that Mllton laid "Lucifer" under the most npefei contributions even if one is not bound to find proof of this in every one or the forty or fifty parallels which the du- thor of Milton and Vondel has set out. MT. Edmundson. like every m dustriOus pursuer Of an lnqulry oI tni' t kind, fell to some extent under the. op- cession of his fixed idea. No doubt ne too often credits Vondel with the orlgl- nal proprietorship of metappQls, similes, details of description, ana flights of imagery which would pe almost sure to suggest themselves IF dependently to each of two poets aedlE- ing with the same subject.
 If Milton and Vondel both compare the descent of an archangel rom heaven to the fall of a shooting stdT' there is not the least reason Tor De- lieving that one of them borrowed so obvious a comparison from the other. At times MT. Edmundson almost leaves the impression of suggesting tnat 1t nt1t ton worked on Paradise Lost Wltn the "Lucifer" before him, paraphraslllS every scene of that drama as ne went on.
 Against this, however, there IS some thing more than moral lmprop4p+Hty; It would have been virtually d physlcdl impossibility. Milton had lost ms SIEn
 
 published, and could have only hao IL read to him. He could hardly, there fore, have done more than borrow run @ it the general plan of his own poem us scenes. incidents and cast or cndI ters. together with such passages or o1- alogue and description as he thought he could better in the borrowing IaKeh one by one, we might possibly put them down to chance. When Wonder Wrltes' The heavens third part ere now hath Unto his standard, the false Morning Star, and Milton Writes:-
 His countenance as the Morning Star that guides ..l The starry flock allured them and with lies Drew after him the third part of heavens host;
 or when we read of the rebel army in | "Lucifer" that
 It quickly grew and like a half moon sharpened it's points and closed on us two horns,
 and of Gabriers bodyguard in Para | disc Lost" that
 the angelic squadron bright Turned fiery red, sharpening 1n mooneu Their phalanx and began to hem him l round, or vet again. when we hear Milton 8 satan repeating, almost word for Word' l after Vondeps Lucifer. Better to reign in hell than serve in l heaven,
 we may still go on clinging to the the ory of accidental resemblance. But af- ter half a dozen, dozen, a score or similar parallelisms the odds against | chance and in favor of design become so overwhelming that the least mathe- matically minded of men will reJect the former hypothesis.
 The long arm of coincidence" is not so long as all that. And most assured ly it is not long enough to cover the fact that MiltOn's Samson Agonistes
 followed in due course upon VondeI5 5 Samson" and that it abounds in evil denceS that in the matter of dramatic
 construction at any rate, to leave the poetry out of the question, he was con- tent to take his Dutch contemporary as his closely followed model.
 ITO borrow and to better in the bor- rowing the poet quietly says, is mo | pla gfarie.
 This dictum, remarks Literature. ought to have been known to the broom-seller of anecdote who remarked to rival trader II steals the twigs, 1 steals the sticks, and I steals the twine,
 and yet I can't sell 'em as cheap as you do" For then, when his compan- ion had given the cynical explanation,
 "Ah, but I steals 'em ready-made,' he
 might have crushed him by the re-
 joinder, Then you are plagiarist or
 brooms, which I would scorn to be I
 borrow, but I better in the borrowing. '" It is impossible on the evidence to doubt that Milton borrowed twine and
 twigs wholesale from Vondel though
 the stick was his own.
 And everybody knows that fifty .dol-
 lars was not an exorbitant figure to re-
 ceive for the job.