The Olneyville times. (Olneyville [Providence, R.I.]) 1887-1917, 1907-07-19
Ideas and inspiration Taken by
One Author From Another.
BUT GENIUS B0RR0WS NOBLY
The Crude Ore Is Refined and the Raw
Material Fashioned Into . Thing OF
Osauty-Shaksspssre ~ . Most Bril-
liant Example.

output OF the lapidary or reissue OF
the mint or, better still, the borrow
ings from n bank repaid with interest.
ut is wonderful" says Charles
Reade, "how genius can borrow" "All
| literature" remarks Oliver Wendell
Holmes. olives by borrowing and lend
ing" and, he adds, "a good image Is
like q 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. "The lighting candle
at q neiShbor's fire." observes Dean
Swift, docs not affect our property in
tho wick and fame" Genius Dor
rows nobly." The transference Is
often a 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
kind Of pedigree in literature. Dante
avows his indebtedness to Virgil, as
the latter himself was under Obliga-
tieus 10 Homer
Arlosto owes much to Virgil. and
Sponsor boTows frequently from
Arlosto. Sponsors "Faerie Queene"
gave birth to Flctcher'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 80 many
blossoms rising from the one stem.
Shakespeare has been called ''the
great warwickshire thief" so inveter-
ate Is his borrowing habit. lie Invaded
literature like Napoleon and brought
back the rarest art treasures TO enrich
and beautify his verse. One Is sur
prised 10 learn that our dramatist has
no original plots, that he has given to
poetry no new rhythm or stanza and
that "be ran not only In the old road,
but I'm the old ruts." His "As You
Like IT, IL taken from an old romance.
The characters OF his Julius Caesar"
arc 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 fame Of his genius and transmit
ed into airy beauty.
Milton. too. is a free borrower. II Is
this fact, indeed, that makes his verse
10 rich In learned remIniscence and so
gorgeous with "barbaric pearl and
aold" He owes much to Shakespeare.
Some critics think Milton's Eve Is bor-
rowed from Shakcspeare's Miranda. In
the Tanning Of the Shrcw" 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 n very mine TO many. rope
IL his debtor. Millions Smoky sor-
ceress'--a woman to the waist and
fair. but ending foul I'm many scaly
fold yoluminous and vast''--is made to
say, 'They cnll me sin and for sign
portcntous hold me; but, familiar
grown, l pleased and with attractive
graces won the most averse." Pope
sings:
vice Is a monster Of so frighttul mien
As TO bo hated needs but to he seen;
But seen too off, familiar with her face,
We nrst endure, then pity, then embrace
Tennyson must have had In mind
Nilton's
Hanging IN q golden chain
This pendent world
when ne 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.
Pore borrows his "yital Spark" idea
from an old poem by Thomas Flatman.
Byron gets his Eagle Feather" i'm.
age In his English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers" from Aeschylus, who dour-
ished in the fifth century before our
era.
Coleridge owes his ode TO Mont
Blanc" TO German poem Ivy Friedrich
Brown.
Bishop Ken is indebted for his
thought in The Evening Hymn To-
Sir Thomas Browne in his "Colloquy
with God"
In his own characteristic manner
Rudyard kipling has met the qucs-
tion OF unconscious thicvcry with n
bit OF verse which commences:
When 'omcr smotc is bloomin' Tyre
Ed card mon sing by land and sea,
And vot o thought q might require
Il went an took the same as me.
Let Shskcspearc's lines close this
paper:
I'll example you with thievcry;
The suns thief and with his great st
traction
Robs the vast sea- the moons an arrsnt
thief.
Ard her pale hre she snatches from the
sun:
The seas a thief. whose liquid surge re.
solves
The moon into salt tears; the earth's
thief
That feeds and breeds by q composturs
stolen