The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1907-07-09
THE GREAT WRITERS,
Ideas and Inspiration Taken b,
One Author From Another.
BUT GENIUS B0RR0WS NOBLy
The Crude Ore Is Refined and the Raw
Material Fashioned Into a Thing of
Beauty-Shakespeare as Most Bril-
liant Example.

Beauty-shakespea as a Most Bril-.
liant Example.
Our great writers are not great rob
bers. Literature is not repository of
stolen goods. What seem like steal
ings by the steel pen are rather the
output of the lapidary or q reissue of
the mint or, better still, the borrow
ings from bank repaid with Interest.
1T Is wonderful" says Charles
Reade, "how genius can borrow" "All
literature" remarks Oliver Wendell
Holmes, elves by borrowing and lend
Ing" and, he adds, "a good image is
like diamond, which may be set a
hundred times in as many generations
and gain new beauties with every
change" This is not a question Of
originality. 1.-THE lighting a candle
at neighbours fire." observes Dean
Swift, ''does not affect our property in
the wick and fame" Genius bor-
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 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 and
that "he ran not only In the old road,
but in the old ruts." His "As You
Like tt is taken from an old romance.
The characters of his Julius Caesar"
are old Romans taken from Plutarch.
But what borrowing! Dry bones are
turned into living men. The common
est materials are taken into the lam
bent flame of his genius and transmit
ed into airy beauty.
Milton, too, is a free borrower. 1t is
this fact, indeed, that makes his verse
so rich in learned Renaissance and so
gorgeous with ''barbaric pearl and
gold" He owes much to Shakespeare.
Some critics think Milton's Eve is Dor
rOwed from Shakespeare's Miranda. In
the Tanning of the Shrew'' 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 scaly
fold voluminous and vast''-is made tc
say, 'They call me sin and for sign
portentous hold me; but, familiar
grown, l pleased and with attractive
graces won the most averse" Pope
sings:
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
AS to be hated needs but to be seen;
To.,k .R&
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
from an old poem by Thomas Flatman.
Byron gets his Eagle Feather" i'm
age in his English Bards and Scotch
from Aeschylus, who -four |
ished In the fifth century before our
era