University of Virginia Library

X.
Accidental Resemblances.

DR. Bushwhacker came to us, to-day, in an old fashioned,
full circle blue Spanish cloak, a fur cap, a
carpet bag, and a small package of pemmican in his
hand. He deposited these articles in the hall, shook the
hand of my wife impressively, and caressed the children
with warmth and tenderness. The Doctor is usually
boisterous with children, but to-day he was subdued.
Moreover, he gave each of them a keep-sake. To Bessy
a stalactite from the grotto of Antiparos; to Lucy a little
paper of sand from the Desert of Sahara; Tom had a
vial of water from the pool of Bethesda; and Jack a
twig of ivy from Melrose Abbey. Even the baby was
not forgotten, for he had brought it a Chinese rattle, that
no doubt was contemporary with the age of Confucius;
and to my wife he presented a little book made of papyrus,
inseribed with Coptic characters, which might have
been decyphered had they not been obliterated by time.
Then, putting his hand in his left vest pocket, he drew
forth a present for me. It was his lancet, which, he
assured me, had bled more respectable people than any
other lancet in fashionable practice. “My learned
friend,” said he, “you have no idea of the fees which

have accumulated upon the point of this instrument.
But the old practice, sir, the old, venerable, respectable
practice is vanishing in these new fangled, latter-day
lights of science. The good old days of calomel and
tartar emetic have departed. The late Surgeon General
broke down the time-consecrated faith in these specifies,
and now, sir, we have to study the physical idiosyncracies
of a patient before we prescribe, as diligently as lawyers
do when working up a case in their profession. The good
old easy days are gone, sir—but I hear the dinner bell!”

The Doctor was silent during the repast. But a bottle
of “Old Wanderer, 1822,” as bright as a topaz, drew
him out. Poising the straw stem glass between his
thumb and forefinger, and viewing the shining fluid with
the eye of a connoisseur, he broke forth—“My learned
friend, do you suppose that the science of chemistry has
advanced so far that this wine could be imitated even by
a Liebig?”

“Certainly not Doctor. To any person of fine taste,
all imitations must pass for imitations. They no more
resemble the original than—”

“Imitations usually do. I know what you want to say,
my learned friend. All plagiarisms are as inferior to
originals, as copies of great pictures, or plaster casts of
great sculptures, are inferior to the works which the pencil
or the chisel, in the hands of a great master of his art,
has accomplished. This is so well understood in the
mere sensuous works of painters and sculptors that even

the most accurate copy of a Raphael, or of a Leonardi di
Vinci, is nothing worth comparing with the original.
But how is it with literature, my learned friend?”

“I do not understand you, Doctor.”

“How is it with literature? Do you think that you
can ever build up an American literature, if the chief
merit of our native authors exists only by imitation?
Dr. Drake, sir, Joseph Rodman Drake was an example.
He was an original native poet, sir. Who has followed
his example? Not one.”

“That would be imitation Doctor.”

“No, sir. It would be emulation. There is a nice
distinction between the two phrases.”

“But what do you mean by plagiarisms Doctor?”

“That is rather a harsh term to use. Suppose we call
them `accidental resemblances.' Now, your friend, Barry
Gray, paid you a great compliment in accidentally resembling
your style. My dear old friend, Washington Irving,
once said to me: `Who is this Barry Gray? He has
stolen from the Sparrowgrass Papers, the style of the
author. Materials are everywhere, and are common property.
But a new style is the author's own. Tell me the
real name of Barry Gray, that I may know upon whom
to pour the full measure of my contempt, for I hate these
literary pilferers.' ”

“Surely, Doctor, you know what stopped my pen at
that time, and so spare me.”

“Suppose we take up Halleck as an example,” said
the Doctor, sententiously.

“Great heavens, Doctor! Halleck! I know that
`Fanny,' has been assumed by the crities to be an imitation
of Don Juan, but, really, it was written before Don
Juan was published. Lord Byron's story of Beppo suggested
the metre, and Halleck wrote `Fanny' before Don
Juan had crossed the Atlantic.”

“What do you think,” said the Doctor, “of his eulogy
on Burns?

“Well, Doctor?”

“Shakspeare, sir! Henry IV, Part I, Act III, Scene
First,

“Ah, Doctor! Halleck intended that to be a quotation.”

“Now, sir,” continued the Doctor, “we have Henry
(again) IV, Part I, Act IV, Scene First, as authority for
another popular catch word—

And Bulwer in his Richelien says—
Do you not see the palpable resemblance of these two?”

“True, Doctor, but what shall be said of them except
that they are—”

“Accidental resemblances! Now, here is another
example, from Paul Revere's Ride in Longfellow's Wayside
Inn.

But Tennyson had already written in his wonderful dramatic
poem of Man—
What do you think of that?”

“Ah, Doctor, you are rather hypercritical.”

“Do you think so?” said the Doctor, slightly reddening,
for he does not like his opinions to be impugned.

“What do you think of this from the Birds of Killingworth,
in the same volume?

“Well, Doctor, I never heard that before, and it is a
beautiful image.”

“Beautiful! indeed it is, if one had never before read
Wordsworth's ode on the Intimations of Immortality,
where we have the same idea presented in a line, the

rejoicing, the rush and leap of the waters, the signal note,
the great concurrence of waters, in one blast, as it were—
That, sir, is poetry, and the other is—”

“But surely, Doctor, you must admit—”

“That Longfellow's psalm of life is original. Arslonga
vita brevis, is cleverly rendered. As for the rest of the
stanza, though I will quote the whole of it—

I cannot quite subscribe to the originality of any part of
it. In my copy of Cowley's Poems, (folio `1668,' page 13,
of verses written on several occasions,) in his Ode upon
Dr. Harvey, who had discovered the circulation of the
blood—”

“And a great discovery it was, Doctor!”

“A great discovery, sir! As great in medical science,
as Galileo's discovery of the rotation of the earth, sir. In
Cowley's tribute to Dr. Harvey, we find this expression
of the poet—full of his subject, the new discovery—the
circulation of the blood.

And here we see the idea of the march, of the musical

instruments, of the band, of the drums beating, embodied
in the lines of our Cambridge friend.”

“So then Cowley was the originator of that thought?”

“No, sir. I did not say so. His lines had `an accidental
resemblance' to the lines of Dr. Henry King,
Bishop of Chichester, who had before written in a poem
called the Exequy, an ode dedicated to his deceased
wife—

There, sir, what do you think of that?”

“Why, let us all thank God, Docter, that such things
have been modernized. Who the deuce could buy Cowley
or Bishop King at this time?”

“Ah, my learned friend,” said the Doctor, “I do not
like your remarks. I have paid a great deal of attention
to these works of original men, and I would like to conserve
them, apart and entire from the vulgar world.”

“What good would that do, Doctor?”

Dr. Bushwhacker paused. He was evidently moving
upon a different plane from the ordinary motion of mortals.
His love of uncut editions floated before his eyes.
Finally he broke forth:

“ `The blessings of Providence, like the dews of heaven,
should fall alike upon the rich and the poor,'—Andrew

Jackson. There, sir, you have an original quotation from
one of the greatest Presidents we ever had.”

“No, Doctor, for in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy,
which is one of the most comical books ever written, you
will find on page 391, edition of 1836, printed for B.
Blake, the following sentence:

That is so near Jackson's motto, that the accidental
resemblance is palpable. Of course General Jackson had
read Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, my learned friend.
What hadn't General Jackson read?”

“Now, Doctor, in regard to these matters, what do
you think of Tennyson's

`Flowers of all hues, and lovelier through their names,'

Introduced in the prologue tothe Princess?”

The Doctor paused.—“Tennyson is certainly an oriinal
poet.”

“But Milton in Book IV, verse 256, in Paradise Lost,
as `flowers of all hues.' Do you think Tennyson stole
from Milton?”

“No, that was an accidental resemblance!”

“What do you think of Lord Byron?—

Compared with Dr. Fuller, in his Holy War, Chapter
XXX.

“Ah,” said the Doctor, `you are too inquisitive, and
too hypercritical. `Grass springeth not where the grand
Turk setteth his foot,' and `where the spahi's hoof has
trod, there verdure flies the bloody sod,' is the same
thought expressed in different ways. One is a commonplace
method of expressing a superstition common in
the days of Fuller; the other a highly imaginative poetical
paraphrase of Lord Byron.”

“But the thought was an accidental resemblance? eh, Doctor?”

Dr. Bushwhacker, whose nut-pick had been busily em
ployed during this colloquy, and who had tasted successively
the Sherry, the Old Port and the Wanderer of
1822, now laid down the little steel implement, which, in
his hand, looked very much like a dentist's tooth filler,
brushed the lint of the napkin off his lap, and rose.
“You ask me too much,” he said. “You overburthen
my mind with ridiculous questions, and expect me to find
answers for all the quips and cranks of an erratic brain.
Do you not know, sir, it is much easier to ask questions
than to find answers for them? Good bye, sir; I wish
you a very good day. My compliments to your good
lady, who, I suppose, is asleep by this time. And a kiss
for all the little ones, who, no doubt, are in the same
happy condition. I am going, sir, to a country where
there are no poets, nor philosophers, nor plagiarists, nor
politicians. To-morrow I shall take a steamer for San
Francisco, and from that place I shall go to our new

Russian American Possessions, among the Polar Bears,
and the beauties of Arctic vegetation. Farewell! and
perhaps you will never hear more of Dr. Bushwhacker.

Note.—After the Doctor had departed I found on my
desk the following paper, which I recognized as being in
his hand writing. As a literary curiosity, I have thought
it worth preserving.