Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/181

 only difference is in the language—the thought remains a constant quantity, being stereotyped and reproduced to suit the emergency.

Now, this perpetual recurrence of the same idea among different poets is often stigmatized as plagiarism. But such a charge is not necessary, and is, I believe, in the majority of cases, entirely without foundation. A man gifted, or who imagines himself gifted, with the power of composing verses, and who has read with care and attention the great masters of the art, will insensibly reproduce many of their best thoughts. Yet such a man is not a plagiarist. He is, at the worst, only an imitator, and an unconscious imitator at that. And for this reason, if not for the one Aristotle gave, poetry may be called emphatically an "imitative art." But there is a still higher reason why one poet should become, as it were, the echo of another; and that is to be found in the nature and limitations of the human mind itself.

The maxim, Poeta nascitur non fit, is the true expression and interpretation of the law which governs the poetical order of intellects. At rare intervals, Nature has sent into the world a few souls endowed with the largest possible measure of ideality and poetical power. Their number may be counted upon one's ten fingers. Inspired with song, this gifted few can not choose but sing. They are the leaders of the choir; while all the rest are but subordinates, obeying the heaven-born impulse given to them by the muses' elect. As well might the mocking-bird, essay the highest and sweetest notes of the nightingale, or the fledgling try the eagle's flight, as one of the non-elect aspire to reach the heavenly harmony of these natural minstrels and apostles of song. Such men as Homer, and Dante, and Shakespeare, constitute the grand natural hierarchy of genius, to which inferior minds instinctively pay homage, and before which they "pale their ineffectual fires." These are the great central lights of poetry, while all the rest are the little miniature worlds revolving around them, and really borrowing from them all their effulgence. Hence we ought not to be surprised to find nothing in the lesser luminaries which the greater do not contain. It is in the order of nature, which it were vain to attempt either to resist or reverse.

Thus the task being almost hopeless of trying to achieve any lasting distinction or success in a field already preoccupied, and incapable of further profitable cultivation, many of the most gifted intellects, in our day, are diverted from it by the greater prospect of reward held out by science, whose territory is vastly more extensive as well as prolific. It were easy to name more than one man eminent in science, whose natural gifts would qualify him to shine in the lists of poetry, and yet who has wisely chosen the path leading to higher honor and remuneration. Hugh Miller might have stood high among the Scottish bards, had he devoted himself to the muses with the same ardor and enthusiasm with which he grappled some of the profoundest