Bluefield evening leader. [volume] (Bluefield, W. Va.) 1906-1911, 1907-07-05


seauty-shakespeare as Most Bril-
liant Example.
Oar great writer's are not great rob
bers. Literature * not repository OF
stolen goods. What seem like steal
inys hy the steel pen are rather the
output OF the lapidary or reissue OF
the mint or, better STILL the borrow
inSs from bank repaid with interest.
1t is wonderful" says Charles
keade. how genius can borrow" "Au
literature" remarks Oliver Wendell
Holmes, elves by borrowing and lend
ng,' and, he adds, "A good image Is
like diamond. which may be set a
hundred times I'm as many generations
ard gain new beauties with every
Change This is not question OF
originality. The lighting "A candle
at neighbor's fire" observes Dean
Swift does not AFFECT our property i'm
the wick aud flame" Genius Dor
rows nobly." The tTansfcrence is
often a transmutatlon. For brass. the
borrower brings gold and for iron.
silver and for wood, brass, and for
stones, iron. The crude ore is refined
aud the raw material fashioned into
ching OF beauty.
II has been pointed out by Mr.. HUH
IN his Life of Buckle" that there Is n
Kind of pedigree In literature. Dante
aNows his Indebtedness to Virgil. as
the latter himself was under obliga-
ions TO Homer
Ariosto owes much to Virgil. and
Spenser borrows frequently from
Ariosto. Sponsors "Faerie Queene''
gave birth to Fletcher's Purple Is
land" and this TO Bernard's isle OF
Man." and this in turn to Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe" and Bunyan's
Pilgrims Progress''-all like so many
blossoms rising from the one stem.
Shakespeare has been called ''the
great Warwickshire thief" so inveter-
ate is his borrowing habit. He invaded
literature like a Napoleon and brought
back the rarest art treasures TO enrich
and beautify his verse. One is sur
prised to learn that our dramatist has
no original plots, that he has given to
poetry no new rhythm or stanza ana
that "he ran not only in the old road,
but in the old ruts" His "As You
The characters Of his Julius Caesar
are old Romans taken from Plutarch.
But what borrowings Dry bones are
turned into living men. The common
est materials are taken into tho lam
bent flame Of his genius and transmit
ed into airy beauty.
Milton, too, Is q free borrower. 1t Ia
this fact indeed, that makes his verse
so rich In learned reminlsoence and so
gorgeous with "barbaric pearl and
gold" He owes much to Shakespeare.
Some critics think Millions Eve Is bor-
rowed from shakespeare's Miranda. In
the Tanning OF the Shrew" occurs the
line:
AS morning roses newly washed in dew.
While Milton I'm "DAllegro" speaks
Of
Fresh blown roses washed in dew.
Milton is very mine to many. Pope
Is his debtor. Milton's Smoky Sor-
ceress"-a woman to the waist and
fair. but ending foul in many a scaly
fold yOluminOus and vast'-is made to
say, They call me sin and for sign
portentous hold me; but, familiar
grown, I pleased and with attractive
graces won the most averse." Pope
sings:
Vice is a monster Of so frightful mien
AS 10 be hated needs but to bs seen;
But seen too Oft. familiar with her face.
We hrst endure, then pity then embrace
Tennyson must have had in mind
Millions
TTau0fV II erofHor
This pendent world
when he wrote:
The whole round world is every way
Bound by gold chains about tho feet Of
God
Tennyson, indeed, derives much OF his
exquisite imagery and fellcltous phras-
Ing from authors whose names, even
many literary men do not know.
Pope borrows his vital Spark" idea
from an old poem by Thomas Flatman
Byron gets his Eagle Feather" im.
age in bis English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers from Aeschylus. who flour
ished In the fifth century before our
era
CoIerdge owes his lode to Mont
Blanc" to German poem by Friedrich
Brown.
Bishop Ken IS indebted for his
thought in "Thc Evening Hymn" 20
Sir Thomas Browne in his "Colloquy
with God"
In his own characteristic manner
Rudyard Klpling has met the qties-
ton Of unconscious thievery with a
BIT Of verse which commences:
When 'Oner arnote rs bioomin Tyre
I'D card men sing by land and sea-
And wot e thought q might require
y went en- took the same az me
Let Shakespeare lines close this
paper:
TI example you with thievery.
The suns thief and with his great at
traction
Robs The vast sea; the moons an arrant
thief
And her pale fire sho snatohes from the
SUM-
rhc seas thief whose liquid surge re-.
solves
the moon into salt tears. the earth.s a
rhot feeds and breeds by a composturo
Trom general excroment; each things a
thief
S. y. Dunn in Circle Magazine.
Mercy to him that shows It is the
'ulc Cowpcr
ROGERS LIVERwoRT