him whom English readers love to call the
'myriad-minded?' Shakespeare began by altering old plays, and his
indebtedness to history and old legends is by no means slight. How with
him who sang 'of man's first disobedience' and exodus from Eden? Even
Milton did not, Elijah-like, draw down his fire direct from heaven, but
kindled with brands, borrowed from Greek and Hebrew altars, the
inspiration which sent up the incense-poetry of a Lost Paradise. And all
the while that Maro sang 'Arms and the Man,' a refrain from the harp of
Homer was sounding in his ears, unto whose tones so piously he keyed and
measured his own notes, that oftentimes we fancy we can hear the strains
of 'rocky Scio's blind old bard' mingling in the Mantuan's melody. If
thus it has been with those who sit highest and fastest on
Parnassus--the crowned kings of mind--how has it been with the mere
nobility? What are Scott's poetic romances, but blossomings of engrafted
scions on that slender shoot from out the main trunk of English
poetry--the old border balladry? Campbell's polished elegance of style,
and the 'ivory mechanism of his verse,' was born the natural child of
Beattie and Pope. Byron had Gifford in his eye when he wrote 'English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' and Spenser when he penned the
'Pilgrimage.' Pope, despairing of originality, and taking Dryden for his
model, sought only to polish and to perfect. Gray borrowed from Spenser,
Spenser from Chaucer, Chaucer from Dante, and Dante had ne'er been Dante
but for the old Pagan mythology. Sterne and Hunt and Keats were only

Bees, in their own volumes hiving
Borrowed sweets from others' gardens.

And thus it ever is. The inceptions of true genius are always
essentially imitations. A great writer does not begin by ransacking for
the odd and new. He re-models--betters. Trusting not hypotheses
unproven, he demonstrates himself the proposition ere he wagers his
faith on the corollary; and it is thus that in time he grows to be a
discoverer, an inventor, an _originator_.

Toward originality all should steer; but can only hope to reach it
through imitation. For if originality be the Colchis where the golden
fleece of immortality is won, imitation must be the Argo in which we
sail thither.

INTERVENTION.

Intervene! and see what you'll catch
In a powder-mill with a lighted match.
Intervene! if you think fit,
By jumping into the bottomless pit.
Intervene! How you'll gape and ga