SCIENCE IN ITS RELATION TO LITERATURE. 169 



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 Jit, 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 mock- 

 ing-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 last- 

 ing 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 pro- 

 lific. 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 Scot- 

 tish bards, had he devoted himself to the muses with the same ardor 

 and enthusiasm with which he grappled some of the profoundest ques- 



