The Havre herald. [volume] (Havre, Mont.) 1904-1908, 1907-07-26
THE GREAT WRITER'S,
Ideas and Inspiration Taken by
One Author From Another.
BUT GENIUS B0RROWs MODIFY

The Crude Ore Is Refined and the Raw
Material Fashioned Into Thine of
Beauty-Shakespea as Most Bril-
1ant Example.
Our great writer's are not great rob-
bers. Literature is not a repository Of
stolen goods. What seem like steal
ings by the steel pen are rather the
output of the lapidary or a reissue of
the mint or, better still, the borrow
ings from a bank repaid with interest.
ut Is wonderful" says Charles
Reade, chow genius can borrow" "All
literature remarks Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Elves by borrowing and lend
ing" and, he adds, "a good image is
like a diamond, which may be set a
hundred times in as many generations
and gain new beauties with every
change" This is not question of
originality ''The lighting a candle
at a neighbours fire." observes Dean
Swift, 'does not affect our property in
the wick and f1ame.'' Genius Dor
rows nobly' The transference is
often transmutation. For brass, the
borrower brings gold, and for iron,
silver, and for wood brass, and for
stones, iron. The crude ore is refined
and the raw material fashioned into
a thing Of beauty.
1t has been pointed out by Mr. Huth
in his life Of Buckle" that there is a
kind of pedigree in literature Dante
avows his Indebtedness to Virgil, as
the latter himself was under obliga-
tons to Homer
Ariosto owes much to Virgil, and
Spenser borrows frequently from
Ariosto. Sponsors "Faerie Queenc'
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
'Pilgrim's Progress''-all like SO many
blossoms rising from the one stem.
Shakespeare has been called ''the
great Warvickshire thief" SO inveter-
ate is his borrowing habi He invaded
literature like a Napoleon and brought
back the rarest art treasures to enrich
and beautify his verse. One is SUI
prised to learn that our dramatist has
no original plots, that he has given to
poetry no new rhythm or stanza and
that "he ran not only In the old road
but in the Old ruts.' His GAS You
Like IT, is taken from an old romance
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 the lam
bent fame of his genius and transmit
ed into airy beauty.
Milton. too Is free borrower. 1t is
this fact, indeed, that makes his verse
SO rich in learned reminisccnce and so
gorgeous with "barbaric pearl and
go1d.' lie owes much to Shakespeare.
Some critics think Millions Eve is bor-
rowed from Shakespeare's Miranda. In
the flaming of the Shrev" occurs the
line:
AS morning roses newly washed in dew.
While Milton in "L'Allegro" speaks
Of
Fresh blown roses washed in dew.
Milton is very mine to many Pope
is his debtor. Millions "Smoky Sor-
ceress'-a woman to the waist and
fair, but lending foul in many a scaly
fold voluminous and yast'-is made to
say, ''They call me sin and for a sign
portentous hold me; but, familiar
grown, I pleased and with attractive
graces won the most averse." Pope
sings:
Vice is monster of so frightful lnien
AS to be hated needs but to be seen;
But seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
Tennyson must have had In mind
Millions
Hanging in a golden chain
This pendent world
when he wrote:
The whole round world Is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet Of
God.
Tennyson, indeed. derives much Of his
exquisite imagery and felicitous phras-
ing from authors whose names, even.
many literary men do not know.
Pope borroWs his Vital Spark idea
AioiLi tt1i YAK ItoSAl ny AhoilIio I,ttI!UI.
Byron gets his Eagle Feather" i'm
age in his English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers" from -Aeschylus, who -four
ished in the fifth century before our
era
Coleridge owes his ode to Mont
Blanc" to q German poem by Friedrich
Brown.
Bishop Ken is indebted for his
thought in THE Evening Hymn" to
Sir Thomas Browne in his "C0l)ouuy
With God"
In his own characteristic manner
Rudyard Kipling has met the ques-
ton Of unconscious thiovery With a
bit Of verse which commences:
When 'On1er snote is bloonin Tyre
Ed card men sing by land and scq.
And Wot e thought e might require
E went an took the same as me-
Let Shakespeares lines close this
paper: