ing. Every intellectual jewel, every flower of sentiment
it is his fine office to bring to his people; and he comes 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 Bares
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 Meung; 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 the