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1. LITERARY IMITATIONS,

113

2. THE GENIUS OF AMERICA,

121

A Broadway Lyric-Suggested by a description of Mr. Stone's Statue of "America.”

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11. THE VALLEY OF THE MOHAWK,

12. SOME ACCOUNT OF A RECENT SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION,

13. GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECE,

14. AFTER THE CAMANCHES,

15. SCAMPAVIAS-PART V.-SUMMER CRUISING,

16. THE STORY OF ALI, BALI, AND KALI,

17. LIGHT-HOUSE CONSTRUCTION AND ILLUMINATION,

18 EDITORIAL NOTES,

156

157

160

164

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American Literature and Reprints.

The Threatened War with England-The French Historian, Augustin Thierry-The Wit and Wisdom of Sydney Smith-Paul Ferroll-Washington Allston's Monaldi-Mr. Dana's Life of Allston?-Commodore Perry's Japan-Mr. Benton's Thirty Years' View-The last Seven Years of the Life of Henry Clay-The Life and Voyages of Herodotus-Rev. J. Leighton Wilson's Western Africa-Life of FremoLt, by Upham.

The World of New York,

220

Benevolent Weather-Our Moral Thermometers-How to cool them down-Travel by Book and Sofa
-The Mountain to Mahomet-Who first invented Fans ?-Their Moral Influence-Palm Leaves
and Politics-Umbrellas for the Million-Punkas-The City of Palaces and the City of
Hotels-A Prize for a Self-Acting Punka-Soda Water, Ice Cream, and Ice generally-The
Horrors of a Short Crop-Vulgar Ble sings-The City Rainbow-Corporation Paradise-The
Inundations in France-A Thousand Versions of the Pathos of a Flood -Its Passages of Beauty-
The Imperial Miscreant" and the Democratic Clubs-The Count de Somebody and Pierre
Boudin-Ma'amselle Lisette and Rose Pompon-Madame Basque and the Empress-Handing
Round the Plate-An Invitation--A Midsummer Night on Broadway, and its Panorama-The
Picturesqueness and the Pathos of the latter Gas-Light-The Fourth of July-Opening China
with Fire-Crackers-Pyrotechnics in the Park-Brown's Equestrian Statue-Mills' Jackson-
Franconi's What's-his-Name-The "Order for Release "-The Drama -What can be done with
One Swallow and Three Flower-Pots-Seven Ages and Seven Parts-Vampires and Raspberries--
Gymnastics and the Thermometer.

Gift G

Nathan's B. Sc. cts,
(H. 3. 1855.)

PUTNAM'S MONTHLY.

A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art.

VOL. VIII.-AUGUST, 1856.—NO. XLIV.

IN

LITERARY IMITATIONS.

"There n'is no new guise that it n'as olde."

CHAUCER.

"Trace to their cloud those lightnings of the mind."

a late number of Frazer's Magazine there is a detection of Lytton Bulwer's pilferings from Sterne, showing that several characters in the Caxtons are imitations of those in Tristram Shandy. The baronet's attempt was rather daring, seeing that Sterne is still read and remembered. But the exposure is complete, and, in going through it, the reader cannot fail to observe in the parallel passages the contrast of the delicate and graceful style of the prebendary and the clumsy cacology of Sir Edward, whose manner of writing, in general so full of palpable effort and affectation, is among the worst to be met with anywhere.

The success of Bulwer is the most remarkable triumph of industrious mediocrity in literature. He is an author of the composite kind, owing all he has achieved less to the force of his own genius than to his voluble facility of imitating others. We can trace his high-life mode and tone to the aristocratic style of Horace Walpole and Lord Byron, his moral sentiments to the German and French schools of moralists, and his historic effects to the melodrama of Dumas and other masters of that genre à la mode et détesta" le, instead of to the true and fine-grouped characters of

VOL. VIII.-8

BYRON.

Walter Scott's romances and tales. We are anxious to know if any one, who ever felt the charm of Ivanhoe and the Talisman, has been able to read through "Harold" and the "Last of the Barons." And mark how, even in the titles of his books, the man of genius differs from the others, who blazon on their titlepages the very grandest names and styles which the historic theme affords

Philip Augustus, Field of the Cloth of Gold, Harold, Charles the Bold, William the Conqueror, and so forth. Woodstock, the Abbot, Kenilworth, present the finest and loftiest historic scenes, in the most admirable subserviency to the trame of the story, and the action of its persons. Scott never works beyond the circle of his genuine feelings. Others exercise their ideas in dead civilizations or dead cities. He never moves without his genius and his heart. In France he finds himself drinking, fighting, and marching with his canny Scots. Constantinople he flushes and drinks ale with his gallant Varangians of the North Sea. But there is no need to dwell on these things, at this time of day.

In

We meant to talk of plagiarism-not of Bulwer, who, after all, is only one

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of the plagiarists with which literature is swarming. Sterne himself caught a good deal of his humor from Rabelais and others; but we must give him due credit for Uncle Toby-in whom he has completely left the track of the antecedents, dramatic or other, which present the miles gloriosus, Pistol, Parolles, Bobadil, and the rest-all thrasonical and laughable men of war. We do not know whether we can call Sterne's idea, of the mimic fortress beseiged, a plagiarism. But it is certainly not original. In 1674, Maestricht, with its palisades, bulwarks, bastions, half-moons, and ravelins, was again taken by the French, in a meadow near Windsor Castle, Charles II. looking on, while his brother James and his son, the Duke of Monmouth, conducted all the 'currents of the leaguer. Indeed, to any one who reads attentively, plagiarism or imitation would seem to be the law of literary progress and excellence; and we are disposed to accept it as such, instead of objurgating it. It is a great fact, and we may as well make the best of it, in a philosophical way.

It is pleasant, no doubt, to our savageminded critics, to find out the conveyances of others-" the wise call it convey" of their contemporaries, especially; and they seem to have ample room and verge enough for their characters of disparagement. But, after all, it cannot be said plagiarism is a sign of weakness. Shakespeare and Burns are among those who have laid most determined hands on the modes and thoughts of others. In this matter the distinction is everything. When a writer improves what he appropriates, we ought to praise or absolve him. It is only when--as in the case of Bulwer -the man who catches his butterfly spoils or disfigures it, that we are disposed to turn out the rough side of our criticism. Good writers assimilate their takings; and that process of assimilation from a variety of things is one of the laws of nature. When an author transmutes a thought, so as to present it in a new light, or with a new grace, he may fairly pass it as his own, and we should receive it as such. We find, indeed, the progress of mind, in all departments of literature full of repetitions and plagiarisms, and these most palpable in the works we most admire. Perhaps the gleaning of a few curiosities of that kind, in prose and poetry,

may not be an idle amusement, if it might lead us to an idea that, in the finest and most effective kinds of literature, there is no such great need, after all, of what is original, far-fetched, flashing, or surprising, and that the mind of man, like nature herself, can produce its strongest and most graceful effects from the common feelings and thoughts, such as lie nearest our hands, or have proved their value in the course of time and changes of things.

Imitation meets us everywhere, in books, and most in those one would think most original. But what of that? The schoolboy is not troubled to think Robinson Crusoe is not perfectly original, but is an idea which, for five or six hundred years, delighted men and little boys before De Foe's time. The conception, like a great many other good things, belonged to the Arabs, whom we are apt to style robbers, and whom we have robbed of many of their inventions. In the eleventh century, Avincenna feigned a child placed on a lonely island, and arriving by degrees at a knowledge of everything. Then, over one hundred years later, another oriental, Ebn Tophail, wrote his Hai Eben Yokdan, a charming story of an infant suckled on an island by a roe, growing up in a savage way, gathering ideas and coming to his sagacity, by right divine of nature, as it were. De Foe, in the happiest manner, reproduced and modified the fancy, and gave to the West the romance of the East.

Then, as to the twin-book, Gulliver's Travels-the fancy of it is very old. Swift got his most suggestive ideas of it from the writings of the impulsive and satiric Cyrano de Bergerac, a Frenchman, who wrote half a century beforeone of those happy wits from whom people are so fond of plagiarizing. It was from him that Moliere (who pilfered his Amphitryon où l'on dine from Rotrou) got the well-known phrase: Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère? Cyrano wrote the history of the sun and moon, to ridicule the philosophies and credulities of his age, and the theories of Gassendi and others, who speculated about the spheres and their inhabitants. He treats philosophy, in fact, somewhat as Cervantes treated chivalry. Desirous of reaching the moon, he fastens round him little bottles full of dew, and, by the law of nature, the sun haled (exhaled) him up in the

morning. By means of this mounting dew (it was something, by-the-by, very like it which carried Daniel O'Rourke to the same place, on a later occasion) he got into the lunar sphere, where he found the inhabitants, people of eighteen feet high, going about on all-fours (reminding you of Swift's quadrupeds,) and living in the midst of a very beautiful creation. They show him for a kind of ridiculous monster, and a mountebank takes him about and makes him jump to amuse the lordly quadrupeds. A sensible person, a solar visitor, is kind to him, and explains that it is the habit of the vulgar everywhere to importune and worry foreigners, saying that, probably if a lunar went to the earth he would pass for an odd creature, among those who knew no better. The solar shows how the moon is preferable to the earth, and the conversation is full of a sly satire on the terrestrials. Bergerac is taken to court and put into a cage with the queen's little beast-one Gonzales, who had previously gone from earth to the moon, and was now treated as a monkey. Crowds come to stare at them, and wicked boys pelt them with nuts. Cyrano learns the language, and hears the lunars disputing, with ferocity, as to whether he has reason or not. They explain his erect head (very differently from the Latin poet) as meaning a complaint addressed to heaven for having made him so miserable-they, the lunars, holding theirs down, to contemplate and enjoy the blessings that lie about them! One of the king's daughters falls in love with him. He happens to observe that the earth is not a moon, but a world; but the philosophers downface him, make him recant and confess that the earth is only a moon. The moon-folk laugh at the earth-folk for carrying openly the weapons that destroy life, and hiding things that chiefly maintain it-a piece of criticism which Carlyle adopts in Sartor Resartus, where he says the man-slayer (soldier) is more honored than the pedagogue. But this is feeble compared with the gross raciness of the Frenchman, who also shows the vivacious fancy of his country, in stating that he had such a smell of moon about him when he came back to the earth, that all the dogs began to bark at him.

In the foregoing, we see the spirit and some of the points of Swift's satire, respecting Brobdignag, Laputa and

other places; and can thus estimate the false conclusions of those who think they trace the Dean's savage misanthropy in his satire. Bergerac was as bitter in his own way. Thackeray thinks Swift especially wicked, for the advice that the Irish landlords, who will not afford the children of the peasantry food enough to live, shall have the little things cooked and served up at their tables-a plan which would greatly relieve the distress of the poor population! What does he say to the Rev. Sydney Smith, who talks in the same spirit of the wretched little chimney-sweeps, and asks what are the agonies of a climbing-boy in a flue, compared with those of a fine lady whose grand dinner has been spoiled by the soot? Thackeray cannot understand Swift.

But we come back to Cyrano; and do so to show that he was not the genuine original of Gulliver, after all. This is to be found in Lucian's "True History." The Greek laughs at the sublime old Atlantic theory of Plato, and at the periplus-makers. He is blown (in his history) to a fine island in the ocean, where the rivers are wine and the trees are women from the waist upward. Thence he is carried in a whirlwind, to the moon, where persons riding on vultures take him before king Endymion, then at war with Phaeton, king of the sun, for the right of colonizing the morning star. Mounted on a gallant vulture, Lucian joins the lunar army, which receives allies from Ursa Major, riding astride on colossal fleas. Big spiders weave the field of battle from the moon to the morning star. Photon comes, bringing auxiliaries from the dog star. Lucian, taken prisoner, attempts to escape, and falls into the sea, where a whale comes up (here the originality of Daniel O'Rourke is rather compromised) and swallows him. In the monster's bowels he finds forests and other wonders. Satire, with a dash of mild extravagance, has a charm for men's minds in all ages. Rabelais imitates the Greeks-fathers and examples of all literary excellence-and is imitated in turn by those who come after him.

We now consider Don Quixote. The idea of it is old, and will be found in the irreverent pages of Lucian and Aristophanes-which last seems to show, "That Socrates himself is virtue's Quixote."

Homer, in his Hymn to Mercury,

turns his godship and other deities into
ridicule. But somewhat nearer home
we find that idea of satirizing chivalry,
in the verses of the bright and manly
Chaucer-long before Cervantes was
born-showing that satiric humor was
more of a native in England than in
Spain. In Chaucer's time people be-
gan to smile at the "derring-do" and
extravagant love of the romances.
the "Rime of Sire Thopas," the knight
is made to say:

"An elf-quene wol I love, y wis;
For in this world no woman is

Worthy to be my make in town;
All other women I forsake,
And to an elf-quene I me take

By dale and eke by down."

In

After several stanzas on this theme, the jolly host breaks in:

"No more of this, for Goddes dignitie!
Quod our hoste," etc.

Still later, that tendency to burlesque the doings of chivalry was exhibited in the Tournament of Tottenham Green;" doubtless to the satisfaction of Henry VIII., whose hereditary policy it was to put down or disparage the power of his nobles. It would be curious, after all, if this satiric style should have come from the East, from which also came the thing satirized-the system of errant-champions going about to slay enchanters, and redress wrongs. There is in a Persian tale a story of Leyfel Molouk, who falls in love with a portrait, and who goes daringly about the world in search of the original-the portrait, all the while, being that of one of Solomon's wives, who lived ages before. Be all this as it may, it must be fairly admitted that Don Quixote is the most original of those works that have charmed the imagination of all the world. The other famous book, which seems associated with it, somehow, in the mind-the Gil Blas of Le Sage-is known to be a plagiarism from the Guzman d'Alfarache of Aleman and the Life of the Squire d'Obregon of Epinel. Gil Blas is less a French than a Spanish book.

Coming to Paradise Lost, we find Milton incorrectly boasting of it as a matter unattempted till then, in prose or rhyme. The fact that the argument of it was often represented in the old acted Mysteries, seems sufficient to show that it came a popular and threadbare theme to his hands. The Saxon monk, Coedmon, sung of the Fallen An

gels, at Whitby, in the seventh century. Vondel, the Dutchman, wrote the drama of " Lucifer," and the rebellion in Heaven. In the sixth century, St. Avitus, bishop of Vienne, in France, wrote a poem on the Creation-his subjects and style greatly resembling those of Milton. He describes the beauty of Paradise, and Satan's regret and rage to see the happiness of the pair, and makes him swear to destroy it. The resemblance is very great; but it can easily be accounted for by the fact that the book of Genesis and the Apocalypse were the guide and inspiration of both poets. Milton, like Shakespeare, seems to have had no hesitation in adopting and poetising whatever idea might have struck him in the writings of others. In Fletcher's" Nice Valour" is a song to which the Penseroso has a certain tone of resemblance :

"Hence all you vain delights,

As short as are your nights

Wherein you spend your folly," etc. The lines in Lycidas,

"Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep

Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ?"

seem to have been suggested by an epitaph written by Turberville (1570), on the drowning of Arthur Brooke, a poet, asking where was Arion's dolphin then. Shelley, in Adonais, adopts the same expression:

"Where wast thou, mighty mother, when he lay," etc.

These imitations are due to the simple nature of the phraseology; for the question is like one which is vainly asked at ten thousand coronachs, wherever the custom of these still lingers.

Byron's lines, rebuking the complaints of men, in presence of the ruins of states, are well known:

"What are our woes and sufferance? come and see

The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way

O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, ye Whose agonies are evils of a day :

A world is at our feet, as fragile as our clay.' These ideas were nearly expressed by Tasso:

"The lofty Carthage lieth low; and scarce The vestige of its ruin may be seen Upon the lone shore: cities die and realms;

Earth and pride by sand and weeds

are

Yet man deplores that he is mortal born; O souls, forever craving and superb!"

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