es
to value his memory equally with his invention. He is therefore little
solicitous whence his thoughts have been derived; whether through
translation, whether through tradition, whether by travel in distant
countries, whether by inspiration; from whatever source, they are
equally welcome to his uncritical audience. Nay, he borrows very near
home. Other men say wise things as well as he; only they say a good
many foolish things, and do not know when they have spoken wisely. He
knows the sparkle of the true stone, and puts it in high place,
wherever he finds it. Such is the happy position of Homer, perhaps; of
Chaucer, of Saadi. They felt that all wit was their wit. And they are
librarians and historiographers, as well as poets. Each romancer was
heir and dispenser of all the hundred tales of the world,--

Presenting Thebes' and Pelops' line,
And the tale of Troy divine.

The influence of Chaucer is conspicuous in all our early literature;
and, more recently, not only Pope and Dryden have been beholden to
him, but, in the whole society of English writers, a large
unacknowledged debt is easily traced. One is charmed with the opulence
which feeds so many pensioners. But Chaucer is a huge borrower.
Chaucer, it seems, drew continually, through Lydgate and Caxton, from
Guido di Colonna, whose Latin romance of the Trojan war was in turn a
compilation from Dares Phrygius, Ovid, and Statius. Then Petrarch,
Boccaccio, and the Provencal poets are his benefactors: the _Romaunt
of the Rose_ is only judicious translation from William of Lorris and
John of Meun: _Troilus and Creseide_, from Lollius of Urbino: _The
Cock and the Fox_, from the _Lais_ of Marie: _The House of Fame_, from
the French or Italian: and poor Gower he uses as if he were only a
brick-kiln or stone-quarry, out of which to build his house. He
steals by this apology; that what he takes has no worth where he finds
it, and the greatest where he leaves it. It has come to be practically
a sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once shown himself
capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the
writings of others at discretion. Thought is the property of him who
can entertain it; and of him who can adequately place it. A certain
awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but, as soon as we
have learned what to do with them, they become our own.

Thus, all originality is relative. Every thinker is retrospective. The
learned