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which we press forward with the like eagerness, and which cease to be such as fast as we attain them? Our case is like that of a traveller upon the Alps, who should fancy that the top of the next hill must end his journey, because it terminates his prospect; but he no sooner arrives at it, than he sees new ground and other hills beyond it, and continues to travel on as before." The simile no doubt passed through many hands before it became the possession of that gentleman who literally translated his Contrat Social from Huber's "De Jure Civitatis, Libri iii.," and indulged in several other similar vagaries. In the fourth book of "Emile," Rousseau discovers that all conquerors are not killed; all usurp ers do not fall victims to their designs. On the contrary, he says, to the populace these evil-doers oftentimes seem happy; but he who, challenging appearances, judges of happiness by piercing to the heart, will trace sorrows in the midst of their successes: "Il verra leurs désirs et leurs soucis rongeans s'étendre et s'accroître avec leur fortune; il les verra perdre haleine en avançant, sans jamais parvenir à leurs termes; il les verra semblables à ces voyageurs inexpérimentés qui, s'engageant pour la première fois dans les Alpes, pensent les franchir à chaque montagne, et, quand ils sont au sommet, trouvent avec découragement de plus hautes montagnes au-devant d'eux. Few could hope to vie with Jean Jacques in turning an affiliated idea to honor and advantage: Sir Walter Scott was not among them. By 1808 the successes of Napoleon had impressed the most resolute of his enemies that it was not the will of Providence they should continue to resist their predestined master. Austerlitz," wrote his knightly biographer, anxious to fulfil his engagements with "the great Napoleon of the realms of print, "had shaken their constancy; Tilsit destroyed it; and with few and silent exceptions, the vows, hopes, and wishes of France seemed turned on Napoleon as her Heir by Destiny. Perhaps he himself, only, could finally have disappointed their expectations. But he was like the adventurous climber on the Alps, to whom the surmounting the most dangerous precipices and as

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Ocean, breaking from its black supineness, Drowned in his own stupendous uproar all The voices of the storm beside: meanwhile A war of mountains raged upon his surface; Mountains, each other swallowing; and again

New Alps and Andes, from unfathomed valleys

Upstarting, joined the battle."

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Quite in another spirit is the use made by Sir John Herschel, in the Introduction to his Outlines of Astronomy," of this (to borrow an expression from Perrault) long-tailed comparison :

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'No man can rise from ignorance to anything deserving to be called a complete grasp of any considerable branch of science, without receiving and discarding in succession many crude and incomplete notions, which, so far from injuring the truth in its ultimate reception, act as positive aids to its attainment by acquainting him with the symptoms of an insecure footing in his progress. To reach from the plain the loftiest summits of an Alpine country, many inferior eminences have to be scaled and relinquished; but the labor is not lost. The region is unfolded in its closer recesses, and the grand panorama which opens from aloft is all the better understood and the more enjoyed for the very misconceptions in detail which it rectifies and explains.'

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It would be a curious problem in the doctrine of chances, worthy of the mathematico-literary tastes of the late Professor De Morgan, to ascertain what is the likely number of these authors, who, if Drummond had not put "Alps first in his category of mountains, or if Pope had not pitched on Alps, would have supplied some other range; the general structure of their sentences would no doubt have been the same.

Indeed, a well-addressed simile so admirably embodies a truth, and is so communicative of it, that where one has to deal with a subject the cardinal point of which has been so presented, he would be unjust to those he offers to teach in repressing it. And if he be a man of weight, he will not need the authority of the name of its originator to support it. Accordingly, Hazlitt, though he has not, like Coleridge, either in his "Lectures on the Literature of the Elizabethan Age," or in any

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other work, translated Schlegel wholesale, has yet, in the delivery of one of these lectures, seen well to appropriate a passage from the German critic's Lectures on Dramatic Literature,' thus rendered by Mr. Black: "The Pantheon is not more different from Westminister Abbey or the Church of St. Stephen at Vienna, than the structure of a tragedy of Sophocles from a drama of Shakespeare. This, Hazlitt has at once condensed and adapted to his audience, with admirable skill: "Sophocles differs from Shakespeare as a Doric portico from Westminster Abbey. But clearly as an idea must be seized before it is pithily expressed,

where an author has and uses the

power

of expanding without enervating, the grasp is as decisive and the invention more in play. Here, with the critic most resolved for the just distribution of literary fame-perhaps here alone the lips that, the justness of that distribution threatened, open but to crush, must be set wide to praise.

Hesiod describes the rise of Aphrodite from the sea, and tells that

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reader's mind another and as rich a source of floral birth :

"Flowers laugh before thee in their beds,

And fragrance in thy footing treads."

A later writer has returned to the older thought. Dr. Westland Marston calls his piece, "Three Dreams of Death.' The dreams are related by a girl in her last illness to her betrothed:

"What heralds sent

From self-subsisting affluence of light
Visit our pensioned world? O happy pair!
Beneath our steps are crushed the casual
flowers

Which theirs bequeath as memories."

Butler, seizing the comic aspect of the episode, finds in it irony directed against lovers' praises of their mistress :

"Where'er you tread, your foot shall set

The primrose and the violet."'* Thus is there broad application of what, upward of two centuries since, Rymer said of a dramatist, to whom we have already so referred as to show the good sense of his remark : I cannot be displeased with honest Ben, when he

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chuses rather to borrow a melon of his neighbour, than to treat us with a pumpion of his own growth."

Among the things to be learned from tracing the same thought in various writers, and noting the resembling closeness of its vestures, are these-which of his predecessors a writer read, and in what spirit he read or studied them. The influence on one of an appreciated writer is recognized; such influence has led in great measure to the formation of distinctive schools. In writing a life of Goethe, it was therefore found well to examine the entries at public libraries that showed what books he had perused. self-chosen masters, we know something And it is evident that if we know the of those that have learned from them. No man who is great is utterly selfstocked; and however resource and

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vigor of mind and soul may mould the objective as it presses upon us, the nature of the objective influence is material. It is, then, markedly in this point, more strongly even than in that already instanced, that the principle of true imitation, the study of plagiarisms, and the study of the history of literature, are connected. "We are indebted," says "January Searle," in speaking of the difference in manner obtaining between Emerson's earlier and later essays-" we are indebted to Montaigne for this change in Emerson's style and mode of thought. It is clear that Emerson has studied him, that he has to some extent adopted his scepticism, and become more catholic than he was wont to be." The mention of Montaigne suggests a number of names—the names of those who, in one form or another, have reproduced some part of the thoughts loosely lying but richly scattered there. Nothing could better illustrate his relation to later literature than the manner in which his treasures (mostly borrowed, and from Plutarch and from Seneca) have been used by Pascal, Sterne, Emerson, and Prior; and at the same time, of the characters of these four men there are reflections, not much broken, in the modes in which their works present the thoughts derived through him. To turn to the last of the batch. "If Prior's poetry be generally considered," Johnson has said, his praise will be that of correctness and industry, rather than of compass of comprehension, or activity of fancy. He never made any effort of invention; his greater pieces are only tissues of common thoughts; and his smaller, which consist of light images or single conceits, are not always his own. I have traced him among the French epigrammatists, and have been informed that he poached for prey among obscure authors. What a correspondence there is between the first part of this judgment and the remainder! It was even closer than Johnson supposed; for the design of the longer pieces was no more original than was that of the shorter. Thus "Alma," the philosophy of which has provoked sufficient praise from Dugald Stewart, is an expansion of some lines in Montaigne on Drunkenness," professedly not his:

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My simple system shall suppose That Alma enters at the toes; That then she mounts by just degrees Up to the ankels, legs, and knees. Next, as the sap of life does rise, She lends her vigor to the thighs; And, all these under-regions past, She nestles somewhere near the waist; Gives pain or pleasure, grief or laughter, As we shall show at length hereafter. Mature, if not improved by time, Up to the heart she loves to climb; From thence compelled by craft and age, She makes the head her latest stage.' There are three circumstances confirming the suggestion that Prior-effectively enough, it must be allowed-has borrowed from the Essayist: (1.) The alternative title of Alma is The Progress of the Mind;" the concluding word of the passage quoted from Cotton's translation. (2.) When Prior inquired of Pope what he thought of his "Solomon," and Pope insisted in reply on the merits of "Alma, Alma," Prior pooh-poohed him. (3.) We know that Prior was familiar with Montaigne, for we find him writing verses in a copy of his works.

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But if Prior could philosophize on a hint by the page, he could follow one couplet in another; and Alleyne, the author of a poetical history of the times of Henry VII., having said

that

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magazine of thought. "Poussin is not accused of plagiarism for having painted Agrippina covering her face with both hands at the death of Germanicus, because Timanthes had represented Agamemnon closely veiled at the sacrifice of his daughter-judiciously leaving the spectator to guess at the sorrow inexpressible, and that mocked the power of the pencil.' And the spirit of the criticism extends to whatever has found expression in proverbial form. Epigrammatical force makes his the line Wordsworth is conveying to posterity:

"The child is father to the man."

unscrupulous in self-concerns, a statesman of unyielding honesty, in everything resistless-in what depths is there solved the problem of thy life! An episode of Romilly's helps to tell. In 1788, Romilly visited the Bicêtre, and was disgusted with what he saw there. Meeting Mirabeau, he mentioned the impression made on him; and Mirabeau urged him to put his thoughts in writing, and give them to him. This Romilly did. Mirabeau translated the notes into French, published them as a pamphlet, "Lettre d'un Voyageur Anglais sur la Prison de Bicêtre, to which he affixed his name. On the

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It is not unoriginal, because Dryden other hand, Romilly afterward printed had already said:

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One of the most curious results comparison of authors tends to show is, that the world is better than its litera ture would tell. The result is well marked. To all but ultrapessimistic philosophers it is pleasant. There is a Chinese saying that marble for being polished is no whit less cold, is no whit less hard; that so it is with courtiers. La Bruyère puts it thus: "La cour est comme un édifice bâti de marbre; je veux dire qu'elle est composée d'hommes fort durs, mais fort polis.' A different application had been made by Tasso. The harshness of his verses is reproached against him. He replies "Son duri, e pur son belli i marmi.' Mirabeau, coming back to courtiers, is as brief : Hommes de marbre, homme durs et polis!" Poor Mirabeau!

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his original letter as a translation from Mirabeau's French. Nor is it to be supposed that Romilly's act was worked out in forgetfulness. Forgetfulness may, however, sometimes have a place in similar events; for it is authentically stated that the criticism of a German paper appeared translated in the columns of a French and was by the very paper, paper originating the criticism referred to in evidence of the superior critical skill of the French. The subject was that Requiem of Mozart (which is marked, perhaps the work of Dumas et Cie. always excepted-by the most striking series of frauds, and most wholesale appropriation of others' work, the history of plagiarism offers.

But it is the ladies, above all other parts of the human race, who have cause to be thankful for the labors of such as are deep in the lore pertaining to

"

Those literary cooks Who skim the cream of others' books, And ruin half an author's graces, By plucking bon-mots from their places." Thus, to the wise of the fair-the beautiful blues-it must be matter of warm self-gratulation to know that the vulgar criticism which concerns itself maliciously-not statisticianly, that is bearable-with the question of feminine taille, is based on repeated scandal, and is not the result of independent observation. Scaliger has the following passage: Soccus humilis est. Italas mulieres altis simis usas vidimus, quamvis diminutivâ voce dicant socculos. Patris mei perfacetum dictum memini, ejusmodi uxorum

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dimidio tantum in lectis frui maritos, altero dimidio in soccis deposito.' But the wit of Scaliger's father is no excuse for the bad taste which allows Charles Coypeau to apply the jest to his mother, and say of her that she wore her "patins si haut, qu'elle ne se déchaussait jamais sans perdre justement la moitié de son illustre personne. Garasse, in his "Doctrine Curieuse,' illustrates some abstruse theological point by the same story, in the aspect given it by St. Vincent Ferrier. One of the aristocracy, marrying by proxy, had only seen his wife in portrait, and there saw represented to all appearance a lady of presence and fine figure. "Il se trouua bien trompé lors qu'il la vid dans sa chambre sans patins, car elle auoit diminué et descreu de la moytié, ce qui l'effraya si fort, que s'addressant à elle il luy tient ce discours à demy en cholere. Ubi posuisti reliquum personæ tuæ ?" Every one knowing anything of the "Mémoires de M. de Brantôme" will not be surprised to find that author bringing to his mind (and to his reader's) a young lady whose experiences were sufficiently similar to enable him to point the lessons of a flowing robe. It is well the good Abbé spoke to the women of his own country; for English beauties, at least those of half a century later, seem, in Cowley's experience, to have combined the disadvantages of high shoes and long gowns. "Is anything more common, asks that philosophizing poet, "than to see our ladies of quality wear such high shoes as they cannot walk in without one to lead them; and a gown as long again as their body, so that they cannot stir to the next room without a page or two to hold it up?"

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This, however, is not the only instance in which baselessly a

"Thought hangs like a cold and slimy snail On the rich rose of love".

to borrow an expression from Alexander Smith, borrowed by him from Keats:

"Speak not of grief, young stranger, or cold snails

Will slime the rose to-night."

The philosopher, too, "i' the melancholy corners of his mouth "-to borNEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXVII., No. 1

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row another expression from Alexander Smith, borrowed from another expression of Keats, "by the melancholy corners of that mouth"-has found lurking complaints. Why terms of reproach should have been heaped on poor Hobbes because he held no law can be unjust," and not on Pascal, who expresses the same thought more unfolded-" La justice est ce qui est établi; et ainsi touts nos lois établies seront nécessairement tenues pour justes sans être examinées, puis qu'elles sont établies," is difficult to tell. Why-but the subject is dry, and we pass to another.

There is, then, always something interesting, as well as instructive, in the knowledge of the means chosen by an author for dressing up his materials. Sismondi seems in one instance to have been let into the secret. Meeting an Italian barber who eked out his income by disposing of sermons to monks too ignorant to compose them, Sismondi discovered that his new friend had an ear sensitive to rhythmical movement, and had acquired facility in constructing a sufficient number of periods, in which sense alone was wanting. Understanding French slightly, and bibliophile enough to dive into all old books he came across, he was accustomed, in order to compose the sermons he sold, to add together the rhetorical flashes of such Christian authors as his researches brought to him; while, to guard against any imputation of plagiarism, it was invariably by the middle of a phrase that he commenced his excursions into these foreign fragments, and in the middle of a phrase he as invariably terminated them. consulted me," says Sismondi, on one of these sermons, without first divulging his secret. And I was not a little astonished, "adds that excellent historian," at these bombastic periods, whose ends never corresponded with the beginnings, and whose several members had never been constructed to go together. A process not very dissimilar in results seems to have been followed by Dr. Blomfield. At least Dean Alford has thought it worth while to point out that there is a passage in the original work of his own Greek Testament to which a passage in an advanced

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