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and of composition. The principles deduced from nature, and the experience of the great masters, must be acquired and made familiar. No good can be effected in disregard of them, nor without a thorough command of them; but to make use of the valuable truths unfolded or embodied by a predecessor, is a different thing from molding oneself upon the aggregate of all his qualities, in which, of course, his faults as well as his excellencies are included. But this latter is precisely the shape in which the practice is enjoined by those who advise the adoption of models. Every person has faults enough of his own without the adoption of those of others, even though such adopted faults did not sit worse upon him than his own.

Imitation may be of the manner, of the matter, of the general bearing of an effort, or of all together. The last constitutes what is called servile, blind, or indiscriminate, and is that to which the foregoing remarks have been addressed. It is difficult to adduce any example of this kind, for, although very numerous, they die almost as soon as born-and properly are they suffered to die in silence, because, from the nature of the case, they must be good for nothing.

A very few moments of reflection will suffice to show the utter impropriety of that imitation of manner, or style, so often enjoined by the advocates of a model. Why should you have a style at all? Why not compose without a style; now in one way, and then in another? Is it because the fashion so dictates, and

you are to put on a fashionable style, as you would a fashionable coat? Can any good reason be assigned, except that because you are now and always the same thinking being, the proper expression of yourself must always be marked by the same prominent features? Now, if these do not correspond to the distinctive features of your character, it is plain that the style is not yours, does not answer to you the purposes of a style. It must be an embarrassment, instead of a facility, a continually misrepresenting medium, through which you can never be understood. Better have nothing to do with it, unless you prefer to live under an intellectual mask, and wear an appearance which must ever give the lie to your real character.

Under this head I may be reminded of the schools of art, of the Lombard school of painting, of the Venitian, Flemish, etc. I grant that the influence of a few men of genius, wielded in that way, has suggested much valuable thought to others; but every one worthy of name, in any of those schools, was himself an original thinker. The mere imitators are the shame of them all.

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may be reminded of the successful imitators of Addison, among whom will certainly be included the names. of Mackenzie and Franklin. Of all the thousands who have imitated that author in this respect, not one has attained to eminence without more distinctive features of his own. Mackenzie, who has been called the Addison of Scotland, never attained that happy

facility which distinguished his master. On great qualities of his own he rose to fame. To the extent of his imitation he was stiff and affected. The story comes from Franklin's own pen, that in early youth he formed himself upon the style of Addison, and must, therefore, be true; but it should not have blinded the eyes of critics to the original merits of a manner so marked as that of his matured productions. So far from being a mere imitation of Addison, the style of Franklin has something in it unlike the style of any other writer in the English language. It is plain and simple; but the simplicity is that of Franklin, not of Addison. That of Addison is the garb of a gentle, poetic mind, humbling itself to praise; that of Franklin, the plain, sometimes the quaint dress of a shrewd, practical philosopher. If an English writer will imitate in this manner, I would say, let Addison be the model. From the simplest manner the least evil will accrue. But however simple the shape, however normal the man, his coat will not sit well on all shoulders.

Imitation of an author's matter may be right or wrong, according to the way in which it is done. If his ideas are adopted without essential change, and without acknowledgement, the act is one of plagiarism, and justly branded as the meanest trick of the most abandoned imitator. When the debt is acknowledged, or the idea greatly improved, the character of the

action is entirely changed. In the former case it is entirely honorable quotation, and in the other may be really invention, which the primary idea only served to suggest. Many brilliant passages in our best authors have originated in rude hints of their predecessors. The following lines from Dyer's Grongar Hill, will immediately recall to memory a more celebrated paragraph, in a later and a greater poet:

"As yon summits, soft and fair,
Clad in colors of the air,

Which to those who journey near
Barren, brown, and rough appear:
Still we tread the same coarse way,
The present 's still a cloudy day."

Here distinctly lies the radical idea of the opening of the "Pleasures of Hope;" but how far inferior in the beauty of its development and associations.

"At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow,
Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below,
Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sun-bright summit mingles with the sky?
Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint, appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
Thus, with delight, we linger to survey
The promised joys of life's unmeasured way;
Thus, from afar, each dim discovered scene

More pleasing seems than all the past has been;

And every form, that Fancy can repair
From dark oblivion, glows divinely there."

In a little poem of Waller, addressed to a lady who had sung for him one of his own songs, occurs the following stanza:

"The eagle's fate and mine was one,

Who on the shaft that made him die,
Espied a feather of his own,

Wherewith he wont to soar so high."

What is here only a puny conceit, has been improved into the most beautiful passage in the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers"-that on the death of Henry Kirk White:

"'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow,

And helped to plant the wound that laid thee low:

So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain,

No more through rolling clouds to soar again,

Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart,

And wing'd the shaft that quivered in his heart.”

Many other such might be adduced, creditable alike to the original conceiver, and the more powerful mind which comprehended all their range and clothed them in beauty.

Again, imitation may follow the shape of a work, or the general tone and bearing of an author's ideas. When it descends to pursue all the windings of a tale, or a train of argumentation, so that the imitator as it were walks behind his model, stepping carefully in his footsteps, and following all his motions, it is called copying, and is to plagiarism as the whole is to the part. The copyist steals a whole plan, the plagiary,

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