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to boast but I can still add up a column of figures quicker than any man in Ireland and never get the same answer twice running. On the other hand I know many schools to-day, where even stupid boys leave with a love of literature and a desire to read the higher things.

I do not want to say this to my old tyrant, whom I protest I love, though he did not teach me much, if I was to teach, and who taught me, I suppose, as well as he could, and much as he had been taught himself. I do not want to say this in person, for I know his face would redden and he would answer, "Sir, I do not bandy words with a miserable specimen of a First Form boy, trying in vain to be facetious. Hold out your hand, sir!"

The days of these good-natured, noisy, genial, blustering teachers are gone, I suppose, for ever, perhaps in Ireland (I was educated in a foreign land) such teachers never were. In Ireland to-day we find instead a quiet reasonable man with a vocation for his noble profession, acting as kindly guide rather than as cudgel-wielding cattle-driver up the slopes of Parnassus. I am glad to think it so.

But speaking about Originality I am not quite convinced that it is always and altogether a merit. The first piece of originality that is recorded about man is Original Sin-O felix culpa!-at culpa tamen! But perhaps with the salutary fear of my old master in mind it would be as well to quote in my defence some opinions from the V. and VI. Forms. Let Mark Pattison speak:-

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Men of original minds were apt to have too little respect for the past because they were ignorant of it. A man who does not know what has been thought by those who have gone before him, is sure to set an undue value upon his own ideas-ideas which have perhaps been tried and found wanting. As accumulated learning stifles the mental powers, so original thinking has been known to bring about a puffy, unsubstantial mental condition."

Something in that, Dick? (we called him Dick' behind his back, because he was a sportsman, even if he was not a born teacher, and because we liked him). But here's a boy higher up in the school than Pattison, a French boy,

VOL. XLIII.-No. 506.

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who apologises for copying from Byron's slate on the plea that Byron had helped himself from Pulci: "Please, sir, Byron did it first!"

"Lisez les Italiens, vous verrez s'il les vole.

Rien n'appartient à rien, tout appartient à tous.
Il faut être ignorant comme un maître d'école
Pour se flatter de dire une seule parole

Que personne ici-bas n'ait pu dire avant vous.
C'est imiter quelqu'un que de planter des choux."
-Namouna II., 9.

-A good verse to steal, let's steal it.

"Byron original? From the Italians he stole !
Nothing's one's own-pray help yourself, do!
You must be about as blind as a mole,

If you flatter yourself that in part or in whole
No mortal had ever the same thoughts as you-
The men that plant taters are imitaters too!

From a bench still higher comes the malediction of Q. H. Flaccus :-

"Pereant qui ante nos nostra bona dixcrint!"

(My curse light heavy on his head

Who dared first say what I've well said!)

We poor scibblers then have illustrious warrant in our first exercises in literary imitation, plagiarism, call it what you will-Convey,' the wise it call. 'Steal!' foh! a fico for

the phrase!

Molière unlike Musset has no apologies to offer for his conveyings," Je prends mon bien où je le trouve"; nor had Ben Jonson who "invades authors like a monarch; and what will be theft in other poets is only victory in him." As has been well said, the question is not who first said a thing, but by whom it has best been said

"What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

Here the beginner in the paths of literary crime hesitating like Oliver Twist at his first burglary in spite of all the counsels of Fagin his venerable mentor, may timidly ask two questions, "Did all my revered predecessors crack cribs in their day? Surely the divine Shakespeare

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Let us look at two pieces of gold from one crib which that burglar of genius cracked:

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Here my Oliver Twist will see that his illustrious forebear did not even trouble to melt down, as was his wont, the two pieces of gold he had deftly conveyed, but that they still bear the imprint of North upon them. But when Shakespeare does take the trouble to melt the swag, he like that glorious plagiarist the bee converts poor juices looted from the humblest flower which takes his fancy, into a sweet fit for the gods. We cannot hope for such luck. If we can only get away unobserved it is something, much if we can put a fresh imprint upon a dull coin or two which we have borrowed. Then will those stern policemen, the critics, applaud the transaction and say, as they have said more than once, that the loan has been repaid with interest. Shakespeare and the Great Burglars have paid back many thousand per cent.

The second question after Oliver has now determined to crack a crib will be, "Master, what crib shall I crack?" And the virtuous Fagin would answer, "It does not really matter for a first haul, but it is just as well to go where there is plenty of stuff. Take your choice, my son, the world is

wide but choose well." Let us see what an Artful Dodger did when he was on the "kinchin lay":

"Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuc

cessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful, and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction, and the co-ordination of parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire, and to Obermann.” (Robert Louis Stevenson.)

This would serve admirably to illustrate what of truth there lies in Buffon's dictum, said so often by others after him and I dare to say by a round dozen before, Genius is the art of taking pains.

We will not become Stevensons perhaps by "playing the sedulous ape," but we shall at least learn gradually what Style is, and even if we cannot become great writers we shall become more critical, more discriminating readers; we shall have raised the standard of our literary judgments and our taste for literature.

In the current number of Studies the Rev. Father O'Neill, S.J., gives us an interesting account of exercises in Poetical Imitation carried out by a class under his direction. The results are most promising. His students may not become poets-Poeta nascitur-but they are learning literature and literary style in the best way, just as a young carpenter is learning carpentry best, when he first takes the wood and tools into his own hands and botches for himself. Would-be writers would do well to buy this Quarterly and supplement the hints I am giving here by a careful study of Father O'Neill's practical lesson.

"Anyone could do that," says the tiro after reading a piece of great verse or prose.

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All right, sit down, my boy, and try. Experience is the best teacher!"

It is just that very simplicity and sense of ease which

marks all great art, which is its note and essence, and which is so often misinterpreted by us beginners, as innocent critics as was poor Partridge, when he saw the greatest actor of the day in Hamlet:

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"He the best player! Why I could act as well as he myself! I am sure if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did. . . . The king for my money: he speaks all his words distinctly, half as loud again as the other. Anybody may see he is an actor!"

University College, Galway.

MAX DRENNAN.

RUE

I heard her speak, the word was cold:
"Now go, and come no more!"

A young face grew a-sudden old
And straight went through the door.

She laughed and sewed her broideries,
And tripped to masque and dance.
Her lovers praised her lips and eyes,
And strove for smile and glance.

She let them pray, she let them wait,
She rose up swift and fled :

She closed her door and white and strait

Lay still upon her bed.

'Oh, would that one would come at call-
Is gone to war and death!'

She turned her face unto the wall

And yielded up her breath.

R. M. G.

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