author himself, as the bulk of what the world receives as a genuine addition to its stock. Of course there is such a thing as real plagiarism, or downright robbery; but with that it is not our present purpose to deal, our intention being to merely furnish some remarkable examples of poetic coincidences of thought; due, apparently, to that unconscious process of assimilation to which Johnson evidently referred. The greatest poets have always been deemed the greatest offenders by the public; and no man's ideas have been more severely scrutinized by the critics than Shakespeare's. His contemporaries declared he had decked himself in their plumage; and their successors have traced many of his golden opinions to another origin; but unlike too many of his craft, nearly all he touched he improved. Shakespeare's similarities are too well known to call for instances. Gray's Elegy " has afforded much Occupation for the coincidence-seekers, who declare it to be a mere piece of mosaic-work, in which every idea may be traced to former writers; and they prove their assertion. In some of the same writer's other poems, many curious similarities have been detected. If Gray, however, benefited by his predecessors' ideas, many of his successors have resorted to him for theirs. The Koran spoke of the angel Israfel's heartstrings as "a lute; the "Elegy" alludes to the heart as "the living lyre;" Moore likens it to "the harp of a thousand strings;" Edgar Poe, to "the trembling living wire; "Charlotte Brontë to "the human lyre;" and Béranger to "a lute." Scarcely second to Gray in these unlucky parallels was Pope; indeed some one went so far as to assert that he was the greatest of all plagiarists. In support of this terrible accusation, much evidence can be adduced. In "Eloisa and Abe lard" is Soft as the slumbers of a saint forgiven; which is suspiciously like Davenant's Kind as the willing saints, and calmer far Than in the sleep forgiven hermits are. Pope's line, I have not yet forgot myself to marble, reads too like Milton's "Forget thyself to marble," to be purely accidental; whilst Sir Thomas Browne's words, in his dear old "Religio Medici," "Nature is the art of God," sounds suggestive of the Twickenham bard's, "All nature is but art." Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne. The close resemblance of the lines beginning Vital spark of heavenly flame, to some that were written by Flatman, an almost unknown versifier of Charles II.'s time, has often been commented upon; whilst the well-quoted words, The proper study of mankind is man, have been traced to the French: "La vrais science et la vrais étude de l'homme c'est l'homme." From the French, from Boileau's "Art of Poetry," has also been derived Pope's sarcastic line, Fools rush in where angels fear to tread ; although some deem it suggested by Shakespeare's Wrens may prey where eagles dare not perch. In explanation, if not in extenuation of Pope's adaptive proclivities, Thackeray urged that "he polished, he refined, he thought; he took thoughts from others' works to adorn and complete his own, borrowing an idea or cadence from another poet as he would a figure or a simile from a flower or a river, a stream or any object which struck him in his walk." Sir William Jones, who, by the way, detected some close parallels in thought between Hafiz and Shakespeare, is credited with the poetic idea, of undoubted Oriental origin, that "the moon looks on many night-flowers, the night-flower sees but one moon." This fancy, which bears some resemblance to an aphorism of Plato's, was probably in Moore's mind when he wrote, The moon looks on many brooks, The brook can see no moon but this. And the late Lord Lytton used a similar idea in the blind girl Nydia's song, where As yon summits, soft and fair, Which, to those who journey near, Barren, brown, and rough appear. Certainly the rendering by the author of "The Pleasures of Hope" is the more attractive; and it is more probable, if the idea was not original with him, that he derived it rather from a line in Collins's splendid ode on "The Passions," No man less needed poetic co-operation than Burns; but a few close coincidences can be shown between some of his best-known thoughts and certain of his predecessors'. Perhaps the most popuÏar idea the Scottish bard ever enunciated was The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that; but it is closely parallelled in these words of Wycherley's old comedy of "The Plain Dealer:" "I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better, or heavier." A still closer resemblance is seen between the lines, Her 'prentice han' she tried on man, And then she made the lasses, O! and this passage in "Cupid's Whirligig," published in 1607: "Man was made when nature was but an apprentice; but woman when she was a skilful mistress of her art.' So closely indeed have the Scottish bard's thoughts been scrutinized, that even his epitaph "On Wee Johnny" has been traced to a Latin epigram of the seventeenth century! Yet he probably never saw one of these productions. It is a noteworthy thing that when famous authors repeat what has been said In notes by distance made more sweet. before, they do not resort to the works. As hinted, Byron has not been deemed of their well-known contemporaries, but free from all reproach in these matters; to forgotten or rare books. Such an inbut it must be confessed that few cases stance of unconscious accretion was doubtof close parallelism are discoverable be- less Moore's "Canadian Boat-Song tween his ideas and those of his prede- Our voices keep tune, and our oars keep time, cessors; he has been more sinned against, in that respect, than sinning. Probably from a couplet in Marvell's "Bermuhe had in mind Churchill's lines, das," And all the way, to guide their chime, Brave old Marvell's thoughts have been In his "Prophecy of Dante" he used a quite an army of invectives; and many favorite thought, – later poets have found the patriot's verse a fruitful source for the supply of needed fancy. "The Dial of Flowers," by Mrs. Hemans, owed its origin, in all probability, to some lines in Marvell's "Garden." How well the skilful gardener drew How could such sweet and wholesome hours In the catalogue of unconscious parallels, the following singular case must not be omitted. "The Dropsical Man "is the title of a piece in Dodsley's collection of poems, containing the line, But hark! my Pulse, like a soft drum, This fancy of Life marching homeward to the sound of a stifled drum, is repeated in Longfellow's "Psalm of Life," where it is said our hearts Still, like muffled drums, are beating Indeed, Longfellow's extensive reading and receptive mind but too frequently lead him into these luckless coincidences. The "Psalm of Life" is almost as much a piece of mosaic-work as Gray's "Elegy." Art is long, and time is fleeting, is as old as Greek literature, although Lord Houghton and Longfellow both treat it as their own property. Sir Philip Sydney has: "Fool, said my muse to me, prelude to "Voices of the Night," Longlook in thy heart and write ;" and in his fellow says, From Temple Bar. we life and death, of birth and burial. These are the limits within which all lesser changes, whether in the inward or outward world, take place. Whatever variety there may be in the lives of men, they have all one beginning, one end. Hence, it is natural that, even at an early period of reflection, the power which brings life and death should be regarded as different from other divine powers, and superior to them. And it would be reasonable to suppose that this power should be denoted by words significant of its equal, impartial and unavoidable nature. In Homer we find such a power; the "doom of death which lays men out," WHETHER Homer ever existed or not, whether the life described in the Homeric poems is a reality of earth or the fabric of a vision, are questions which may be left to serious moments; when read Homer for enjoyment we may still believe in the blind old man as a creature of flesh and blood, and look on Nausicaa's game at ball as a form of amusement current in some early "prehellenic " period. We may do this with a good conscience. For in any case there is and must be a large amount of realism in Homer; whatever the origin of the poems, the poets who composed them were the children of" the doom attached to the thread of their days, with imaginations more or less limited by what they saw and knew of the world around them, or heard of as belonging to the past. Realism of this kind is inseparable from all poetry. Soar as he will in his imagination, the poet is still rooted to the earth on which he stands. However childlike his audience in an early age may be, he must not go beyond their range, and speak of things which have no meaning and reality for them, or he will cease to give pleasure, and his mission as poet is then at an end. For us, then, the Homeric age may still exist, prehistoric indeed and hardly fixed in locality, but still an age of living men and women, whose joys and sorrows, loves and hates, aspirations and thoughts, have an undying interest. Though it is the ethical rather than the religious thoughts in the poems which are of abiding value, the religious aspect of the Homeric life is nevertheless a matter of deep interest, because it is in this direction that the first conscious reflection on human existence finds utterance. Man quickly personifies the powers of nature in some form or another, and begins to ask what is his relation to those powers. He surrounds himself with a multitude of deities, gods of the storm or the clear sky, of growth and decay, of water or fire; and to these forms of the natural world he adds the deified passions of his own nature, gods of war or love. His relations to this multitude of divine powers soon become of a complicated naYet among them there emerge as of the first importance the great facts of ture. birth." It is spoken of sometimes as the In his mother's arms he placed love Hector beheld, and pressed her hand, and thus heart! No man shall take my life; and when it comes, He will not die before the appointed time, and when that time comes, he will not escape his doom. Neither labor nor rest can defer the evil day. Alike the idlers and the active die. To the mass of men this day of doom is unknown, "it will come when it will "but in two instances the secret come; is partially divulged. Achilles, who is allowed to know that two fates are in store for him, and to choose between them. indeed the son of a divine mother, is | me is divided. Shall I take him alive from the battle and place him in the land of Lycia? or shall I suffer him to fall beneath the hands of Patroclus?" Here replies that if Zeus intervenes to save his own child, other gods who have sons fighting on the plains of Troy will desire to do the same by them, or chafe at the exemption allowed by Zeus. I by my goddess-mother have been warned, It adds to the grandeur of the Grecian hero that he should be allowed his choice, and choose the lot of glory and death, just as in the Odyssey it adds to the nobility of the steadfast Ithacan that he should choose to return home to Penelope through all the threatened perils of the sea rather than abide in a safe and quiet existence with the divine Calypso in her gorgeous island. Life is the first of blessings, but life to be a blessing must be free. In the other instance Helenus, the Trojan seer, bids his brother Hector go fearlessly forth to challenge the noblest of the Achæans to single combat. Helenus, the son of Priam, knew The secret counsel by the gods devised; And drawing near to Hector, thus he spoke : Hector, thou son of Priam, sage as Jove In council, hearken to a brother's words. Bid that the Greeks and Trojans all sit down, And thou defy the boldest of the Greeks With thee in single combat to contend; By revelation from the eternal gods I know that here thou shalt not meet thy fate." Here the ethical effect is just the reverse. For us, at any rate, it takes away somewhat from the bravery and nobleness of Hector that he should challenge the bravest Greek, when well aware that he cannot himself be slain. For us-for whether we are justified in reading so much between the lines is doubtful, and Hector's joy at his brother's suggestion is perhaps no more than a touch of the naïveté so characteristic of Homer. In another passage while Zeus and Here are watching the battle on the plains of Troy, Patroclus and Sarpedon are seen approaching each other. Sarpedon is the beloved son of Zeus, whose doom it is to fall at the hands of Patroclus. The king of heaven is touched with pity at the sight, and hesitates for a moment whether he shall put forth his divine power and save Sarpedon or not. "Woe is me that it is the doom of Sarpedon to perish at the hands of Patroclus. My heart within | plied, But to the ground some drops of blood let fall, It is not life and death only which are regulated by aisa or moira, for, as has been said, the suffering and joy of a man are part of his doom. Alcinous the Phæacian king, will convey the sea-worn Odysseus safely home to Ithaca, and there he must suffer "whatever things fate has in store for him." Yet the measure thus dealt out, and even the end of life itself, is not absolutely fixed; the folly and wickedness of men may increase the evil allotted to them at birth, or bring on the day of doom before the appointed time. It was thus that Ægisthus brought upon himself woe beyond what was appointed because he transgressed with the wife of Agamemnon in spite of the clear monitions of the gods; thus did the folly of the companions of Odysseus in eating the oxen of the sun take from them the safe return to Ithaca which would otherwise have been their lot. Such in the abstract are some of the most important conditions of the life described to us in Homer. To examine them in detail would be useless, if we expect to find in them anything like a consistent system. They imply a fatalism which is not absolute and a freedom which is limited. Hector tells us plainly: "A man will not die before his day, nor live beyond it," yet Ægisthus by his crime brought upon himself an early death, and Sarpedon's doom might have been de |