Parallel Passages
One of the most elegant of literary recreations is that of tracing poetical or prose imitations and similitudes; and there are few men of letters who have not been in the habit of making parallel passages, or tracing imitation in the thousand shapes it assumes.—D’Israeli.
She fair, divinely fair, fit love for gods.
Milton, “Paradise Lost.”
A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair.
Tennyson, “Dream of Fair Women.”
Auld Nature swears the lovely dears
Her noblest work she classes, O;
Her ’prentice han’ she tried on man,
And then she made the lasses, O.
Burns, “Green Grow,” etc.
This thought was anticipated in “Cupid’s Whirligig,” a play by Edward Sharpham, first printed in 1607: “Man was made when Nature was but an apprentice, but woman when she was a skilful mistress of her art.”
“But, oh! eternity’s too short
To utter all Thy praise.”
So wrote Addison, in the well-known hymn. Young writes in the “Christian Triumph,”—
“Eternity, too short to speak Thy praise!
Or fathom Thy profound of love to man!”
These writers were contemporaries. Did the same thought occur to each independently, or did one borrow from the other?
In Dr. Johnson’s epitaph on Goldsmith, in Westminster Abbey, occurs the expression, “Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury, in drawing a comparison between the eloquence of Cicero and that of Demosthenes, says, “He adorns everything he touches.”
Authority melts from me.
“Antony and Cleopatra,” iii, 2.
Authority forgets a dying king.
Tennyson, “Mort d’Arthur.”
Woe to thee O land when thy king is a child.
Ecclesiastes, x, 16.
Woe to the land that’s governed by a child.
“Richard III.,” ii, 3.
Falstaff, in the Second Part of “King Henry IV.,” act i, scene 2, says, “I am not only wit in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.”
If Plato may be believed, Socrates made use of a similar expression about two thousand years before Shakespeare was born. Speaking to Protagoras, Socrates says, “For who is there but you? who not only claim to be a good man, for many are this, and yet have not the power of making others good. Whereas you are not only good yourself, but also the cause of goodness in others.”—Jowett’s Translation.
Time flies, my pretty one! These precious hours are very sweet to thee; make the most of them. Now, even now, as thou twinest that brown curl on that finger—see! it grows gray!
Frederick Locker, “My Confidences.”
I will not argue the matter; time wastes too fast. Every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen; the days and hours of it, more precious—my dear Jenny—than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more; everything presses on—whilst thou art twisting that lock,—see! it grows gray!
Sterne, “Tristram Shandy.”
Sir, for a quart d’ecu5 he will sell the fee simple of his salvation, the inheritance of it, and cut the entail from all remainders.
“All’s Well that Ends Well,” iv., 3.
Who, if some blockhead should be willing
To lend him on his soul a shilling,
A well-made bargain would esteem it,
And have more sense than to redeem it.
Churchill, “The Ghost.”
Many witty authors compare the present time to an isthmus or narrow neck of land, that rises in the midst of an ocean, immeasurably diffused on either side of it.
—Spectator, 590.
Lo, on a narrow neck of land,
’Twixt two unbounded seas I stand
Secure, insensible. Wesley.
This narrow isthmus ’twixt two boundless seas,
The past, the future, two eternities.
Moore, “Lalla Rookh.”
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
Longfellow, “Elizabeth.”
Like driftwood spars which meet and pass
Upon the boundless ocean-plain,
So on the sea of life, alas!
Man nears man, meets, and leaves again.
Matthew Arnold, “Terrace at Berne.”
O, my friend!
We twain have met like ships upon the sea,
Who hold an hour’s converse, so short, so sweet;
One little hour! and then away they speed
On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam,
To meet no more. Alexander Smith.
The Rev. John Beecher, who may be remembered in connection with a criticism upon one of Lord Byron’s poems, was the author of this passage: “As ships meet at sea a moment together, when words of greeting must be spoken, and then away again in the darkness; so men meet and part in this world.”
The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise.
Pope, “Criticism.”
And climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou
Look higher, then perchance thou mayest—beyond
A hundred ever-rising mountain lines,
And past the range of Night and Shadow,—see
The high heaven dawn of more than mortal day.
Tennyson, “Tiresias.”
Cowley, in his “Davideis,” says of the Messiah:
Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound,
And reach to worlds that must not yet be found.
And Pope, in his “Essay on Criticism,” referring to the Grecian and Roman poets, says:
Nations unborn your mighty name shall sound,
And worlds applaud that must not yet be found.
In the ballad of Lochinvar, in “Marmion,” are the following lines:
She looked down to blush,
And she looked up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips,
And a tear in her eye.
In Samuel Lover’s song, “Rory O’More,” we also find this:
Now Rory be aisy,
Sweet Kathleen would cry;
Reproof on her lip,
But a smile in her eye.
In the Greek “Anthology” is an epigram by an unknown writer, which is thus translated:
Two evils, poverty and love,
My anxious bosom tear;
The one my heart would little move,
But love I cannot bear.
Burns reproduces this thought in a song sent to his friend Thomson:
O poortith cauld, and restless love,
Ye wreck my peace between ye;
But poortith a’ I could forgie,
An ‘twerna for my Jeanie.
Douce, in his “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” quotes from Marlowe’s translation of Ovid’s “Art of Love:”
For Jove himself sits in the azure skies
And laughs below at lovers’ perjuries,
and says that from these lines of the “Ars Amatoria” Shakespeare took
At lovers’ perjuries,
They say, Jove laughs.—“Romeo and Juliet.”
Christopher Marlowe died in 1593, and the earliest quarto edition of Romeo and Juliet appeared in 1597.
Happy the man who his whole time doth bound
Within the enclosure of his little ground.
Cowley, “Claudian.”
Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground. Pope, “Solitude.”
Eve, in “Paradise Lost,” addressing Adam, says:
With thee conversing I forget all time
All seasons and their change,
Wesley echoes this couplet, hymn 214, in addressing Christ:
With thee conversing we forget
All time, all toil, all care.
Cowley, in a paraphrase of one of Horace’s Epodes, says:
Nor does the roughest season of the sky
Or sullen Jove all sports to him deny.
He runs the mazes of the nimble hare;
His well-mouthed dogs’ glad concert rends the air.
These lines appear in Pope’s “Windsor Forest” thus modified:
Nor yet, when moist Arcturus clouds the sky,
The woods and fields their pleasing toils deny;
To plains with well-breathed beagles we repair,
And trace the mazes of the circling hare.
In Thomson’s “Seasons” we find in Winter the expression, “contiguous shade,” and in Summer the line,
A boundless deep immensity of shade.
Cowper, in “The Task,” has a line which he evidently owes to Thomson,
Some boundless contiguity of shade.
Churchill says in “The Farewell”:
Be England what she will,
With all her faults she is my country still.
Cowper, who admired Churchill’s poetry as strongly as he detested his principles, says in “The Task”:
England, with all thy faults I love thee still.
But several years before Churchill wrote “The Farewell,” the profligate Bolingbroke concluded a letter to Dean Swift as follows: “Dear Swift, with all thy faults I love thee entirely; make an effort and love me with all mine.”
With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies!
How silently and with how wan a face!
Sir Philip Sidney.
With what a silent and dejected pace
Dost thou, wan Moon, upon thy way advance—
Henry Kirk White, “Angelina.”
There is a well-known anecdote of Marshal Blücher, who, on his progress through London, is recorded to have expressed his wonder and cupidity at the wealth of the metropolis in some such words as “Was für Plunder.” In Malcolm’s “Sketches of Persia” is the following:
Seeing my [Afghan] friend quite delighted with the contemplation of this rich scene [Calcutta], I asked him, with some exultation, what he thought of it. “A wonderful place to plunder,” was his reply.
One to destroy is murder by law,
And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe;
To murder thousands takes a specious name,
War’s glorious art, and gives immortal fame.
Young, “Love of Fame.”
One murder makes a villain,
Millions a hero; kings are privileged
To kill; and numbers sanctify the crime.
Bishop Porteus, “Essay on Death.”
Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not,
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought.
Byron, “Childe Harold.”
’Tis well! from this day forward we shall know
That in ourselves our safety must be sought;
That by our own right hands it must be wrought.
Wordsworth, “Sonnets.”
The purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.
“Hamlet,” iii, 2.
True, said the knight, the ornaments of comedy ought not to be rich and real, but feigned and artificial, like the drama itself, which I would have thee respect, Sancho, and receive into favor, together with those who represent and compose it; for they are all instruments of great benefit to the commonwealth, holding, as it were, a looking-glass always before us, in which we see naturally delineated all the actions of life.
Cervantes, “Don Quixote.”
Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, to call our Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as we all are, perhaps at no era of his life was he more decisively the Servant of Goodness, the Servant of God, than even now when doubting God’s existence.
Carlyle, “Sartor Resartus.”
I am not unmindful of the saying of an eminent Presbyterian, Dr. Norman Macleod, that many an opponent of dogma is nearer to God than many an orthodox believer; or of the words of Laertes on the dead Ophelia and the priest:
“A ministering angel shall my sister be
When thou liest howling.”
W. E. Gladstone, “Religious Thought.”
Evil is wrought by want of thought
As well as want of heart.
Hood, “Lady’s Dream.”
Time to me this truth has taught
(’Tis a treasure worth revealing),
More offend from want of thought
Than from any want of feeling.
Charles Swain.
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.
Scott, “Old Mortality.”
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty
Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
Addison, “Cato.”
The life of a man of virtue and talent, who should die in his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own feelings, longer than that of a miserable, priest-ridden slave who dreams out a century of dulness.
Shelley, “Notes to Queen Mab.”
The most striking scene in “Ivanhoe” is where Rebecca, pursued by Front de Bœuf on the tower of the castle, threatens to throw herself from the battlement saying, that “the Jewish maiden would rather trust her soul with God than her honor to the Templar.” Sir David Dundas tells a story of a Scotch laird who, to escape a criminal indictment, disappeared in 1715. Thirty years afterwards, 1745, he returned, and was arrested and tried for his life. The prosecution relied on the evidence of an ex-bailiff of the laird, who had undertaken to identify him. After gazing at him, he told the judge that he was “verra like his maister,” but on looking at him “weel he doubted, indeed he felt sure that he was not his maister at all,” and as there were no other witnesses, the case broke down. The Presbyterian minister of the place vented his indignation on the witness in the strongest terms,—
“Where, you perjured villain, do you expect to go after death, lying to God as you have done to-day?”
“Weel, weel, meenister,” was the reply, “what you say may be a’ verra true, but you see I’d raither trust my soul with my Maker than my maister with thae fellows.”
In the altercation between Dr. Johnson and Beauclerk (April 16, 1779) as reported by Boswell, Beauclerk said:
“Mr. —— (Johnson’s friend Fitzherbert), who loved buttered muffins, but durst not eat them because they disagreed with his stomach, resolved to shoot himself; and then he ate three buttered muffins for breakfast before shooting himself, knowing that he should not be troubled with indigestion.”
In “Pickwick Papers,” chap, xiv, Sam Weller says:
“‘How many crumpets at a sittin’ do you think ’ud kill me off at once?’ says the patient.
“‘I don’t know,’ says the doctor.
“‘Do you think half a crown’s worth ’ud do it?’ says the patient.
“‘I think it might,’ says the doctor.
“‘Three shillins’ worth ‘ud be sure to do it, I s’pose,’ says the patient.
“‘Certainly,’ says the doctor.
“‘Wery good,’ says the patient.
“‘Good night.’
“Next mornin’ he gets up, has a fire lit, orders in three shillins’ worth o’ crumpets, toasts ’em all, eats ’em all, and blows his brains out.”
Washington Irving’s “Pride of the Village,” in his “Sketch Book,” has for its backbone the pathetic story of a blasted life and a broken heart, which, it seems likely, may have afforded to Tennyson the suggestion for his exquisite May Queen, inasmuch as Irving’s “Pride of the Village” was also “Queen of the May,” “crowned with flowers and blushing and smiling in all the beautiful confusion of girlish diffidence and delight.” And then in a later scene we see her wasted and hectic. “She felt a conviction that she was hastening to the tomb, but looked forward to it as a place of rest. The silver cord that had bound her to existence was loosed, and there seemed to be no more pleasure under the sun.” The Laureate’s May Queen is touched by the sweetness “of all the land about and all the flowers that blow;” and the “Pride of the Village” would “totter to the window, where, propped up in her chair, it was her enjoyment to sit all day and look out upon the landscape.” The May Queen of the poet exults in the honeysuckle that “round the porch has woven its wavy bowers,” and she is anxious when she is gone little Effie should “train the rose-bush that she set about the parlor window,” and to Irving’s “Pride of the Village” “the soft air that stole in [through the lattice] brought with it the fragrance of the clustering honeysuckle which her own hands had trained round the window.” The May Queen reaches forward to view her grave “just beneath the hawthorne shade” and wills that Effie shall not come to see her till it be “growing green,” and in Irving’s sketch “evergreens had been planted about the grave of the village favorite, and osiers were bent over to keep the turf uninjured.”
Ah, Christ, that it were possible
For one short hour to see
The souls we loved that they might tell us
What and where they be.
Tennyson, “Maud.”
Oh that it were possible we might
But hold some two days’ conference with the dead!
From whom I should learn somewhat I am sure
I never shall know here.
Webster, “Duchess of Malfy.”
The dead! the much-loved dead!
Who doth not yearn to know
The secret of their dwelling place,
And to what land they go?
What heart but asks, with ceaseless tone,
For some sure knowledge of its own.
Mary E. Lee.
The trapper had remained nearly motionless for an hour. His eyes alone had occasionally opened and shut. Suddenly, while musing on the remarkable position in which he was placed Middleton felt the hand which he held grasp his own with incredible power, and the old man, supported on either side by his friends, rose upright to his feet. For a moment he looked around him as if to invite all in presence to listen (the lingering remnant of human frailty), and then, with a fine military elevation of the head, and with a voice that might be heard in every part of that numerous assembly, he pronounced the word “Here.”
Fenimore Cooper, “The Prairie.”
At the usual evening hour the chapel bell began to toll, and Thomas Newcome’s hands outside the bed feebly beat a tune, and just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a little and quickly said, “Adsum,” and fell back. It was the word we used at school when names were called, and lo, he, whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the presence of the Master.
Thackeray, “The Newcomes.”
And as he looked around, she saw how Death the consoler,
Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever.
Longfellow, “Evangeline.”
In the Greek Anthology, likening Death to a healer of pain and sorrow is expressed in an epigram of Agathias:
Why fear ye Death, the parent of repose,
That puts an end to penury and pain?
His presence once, and only once, he shows,
And none have seen him e’er return again.
But maladies of every varying hue
In thick succession human life pursue.
I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country. Nathan Hale, “Last Words,” Sept., 1776.
What pity it is
That we can live but once to serve our country!
Addison, “Cato.”
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Wordsworth, “Sonnets.”
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn.
Dr. Holmes, “Nautilus.”
’Tis said with Sorrow Time can cope;
But this I feel can n’er be true;
For by the death-blow of my Hope
My Memory immortal grew.
Byron, “Written Beneath a Picture.”
They said that Love would die when Hope was gone,
And Love mourned long, and sorrowed after Hope;
At last she sought out Memory, and they trod
The same old paths where love had walked with Hope,
And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears.
Tennyson, “The Lover’s Tale.”
The following paraphrase is from the German of Lessing:
While Fell was reposing himself on the hay
A reptile concealed bit his leg as he lay;
But all venom himself, of the wound he made light,
And got well, while the scorpion died of the bite.
Similar is the last stanza of Goldsmith’s “Elegy on the death of a Mad Dog” in the “Vicar of Wakefield:”
But soon a wonder came to light,
That showed the rogues they lied,
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died.
Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death.
Young, “Night Thoughts.”
Virtue’s a bridge (near the Cross whereby
We pass to happiness beyond the spheres)
Whose arches are faith, hope, and charity,
And what’s the water but repentant tears?
Thomas Bancroft.
I saw fair Cloris walk alone,
When feathered rain came softly down,
And Jove descended from his tower
To court her in a silver shower.
The wanton snow flew to her breast,
Like little birds into their nest,
And overcome with whiteness there,
For grief it thawed into a tear,
Thence falling on her garment’s hem,
To deck her froze into a gem. Strode.
Those envious flakes came down in haste,
To prove her breast less fair;
Grieving to find themselves surpassed,
Dissolved into a tear. Dodsley.
There are a thousand doors to let out life;
You keep not guard of all: and I shall find,
By falling headlong from some rocky cliff,
Poison, or fire, that long rest.
Massinger, “Parliament of Love.”
At once give each inquietude the slip,
By stealing out of being when he pleased,
And by what way; whether by hemp or steel:
Death’s thousand doors stand open.
Blair, “The Grave.”
Her cheek [the Sultana Gulbeyaz] began to flush, her eyes to sparkle,
And her proud brow’s blue veins to swell and darkle;
She stood a moment as a Pythoness
Stands on her tripod, agonized, and full
Of inspiration gathered from distress.
Byron, “Don Juan.”
The Countess [Amy Robsart] stood in the midst of her apartment like a juvenile Pythoness, under the influence of the prophetic fury. The veins in her beautiful forehead started into swollen blue lines—her cheek and neck glowed like scarlet—her eyes were like those of an imprisoned eagle.
Scott, “Kenilworth.”
Of some for glory such the boundless rage
That they’re the blackest scandal of their age.
Young.
On Butler, who can think without just rage?
The glory and the scandal of the age. Oldham.
Drayton, in one of his Elegies, says:
Next these learn’d Johnson in this list I bring,
Who had drunke deepe of the Pierian spring.
And the bard of Twickenham tells us
A little learning is a dangerous thing; ·
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.
Then, warmly walled with books,
While my wood-fire supplied the sun’s defect,
Whispering old forest-sagas in its dreams,
I take my May down from the happy shelf
Where perch the world’s rare song-birds in a row,
Waiting my choice to open with full breast,
And beg an alms of spring-time ne’er denied
Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods
Throb thick with merle and mavis all the year.
Lowell.
With hands clasped before him, and forefingers pressed against his lips, he travelled slowly with his eye along the great rows of shelved volumes on the walls, as though seeking temporary company in their familiar forms and titles.
Many another lonely man, unable to enjoy that strangely soothing companionship for the solitary, which nature gives in the murmuring and music of the woods, has found in his library a forest as tranquilizing to the fevered mind, and discovered between its unfading leaves the birds that make tenderest music for the soul.
Orpheus C. Kerr.
Among the epigrams of Leonidas of Tarentum, in the Greek Anthology, is one which becomes especially interesting if we take into account the writer’s history, and bear in mind that he had experimental knowledge of exile, from having been carried away captive by Pyrrhus. Its subject is “Home, sweet home.”
Cling to thy home! if there the meanest shed
Yield thee a hearth and shelter for thy head,
And some poor pot with vegetables stored
Be all that heaven allots thee for a board,
Unsavory bread, and herbs that scatter’d grow
Wild on the river bank or mountain brow,—
Yet e’en this cheerless mansion shall provide
More heart’s repose than all the world beside.
No one can help comparing this with Goldsmith’s “Traveller”:
Thus every good his native wilds impart
Imprints the patriot passion on his heart;
And e’en those hills that round his mansion rise,
Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies.
Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms,
And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms, etc.,
and with the even more familiar lines of the same poem, commencing with The shuddering tenant of the frigid zone.
The attention of Prof. Blackie and other literary and patriotic Scotchmen has been called to the following communication addressed by Mr. J. A. Neale to Notes and Queries: A somewhat extensive study of English literature has revealed to me many instances of imitation and plagiarism; but I have never met with a more remarkable example than this afforded by the following epitaph, published in an old edition of “Camden’s Remains,” and a poem by Burns entitled “The Joyful Widower.” I give the epitaph and the poem in full.
One, to show the good opinion he had of his wife’s soul departed, who in her lifetime was a notorious shrew, writes upon her this epitaph:
We lived near one-and-twenty year
As man and wife together:
I could not stay her longer here,
She’s gone, I know not whither.
But did I know, I do protest
(I speak it not to flatter)
Of all the women in the world,
I swear I’d ne’er come at her.
Her body is bestowed well,
This handsome grave doth hide her;
And sure her soul is not in hell,
The devil could ne’er abide her.
But I suppose she’d soar’d aloft,
For in the late great thunder
Methought I heard her very voice,
Rending the clouds asunder.
THE JOYFUL WIDOWER.
I married with a scolding wife
The fourteenth of November;
She made me weary of my life,
By one unruly member.
Long did I bear the heavy yoke,
And many griefs attended:
But, to my comfort be it spoke,
Now, now her life is ended.
We liv’d full one-and-twenty years
As man and wife together:
At length from me her course she steer’d,
And gone I know not whither:
Would I could guess, I do profess,
I speak and do not flatter,
Of all the women in the world,
I never could come at her.
Her body is bestowed well,
A handsome grave does hide her,
But sure her soul is not in hell,
The de’il would ne’er abide her;
I rather think she is aloft,
And imitating thunder;
For why—methinks I hear her voice
Tearing the clouds asunder.
Notes
5. The fourth part of the smaller French crown, about sixteen cents.