Page images
PDF
EPUB

ploits of the Buccaneers, and one which
filled the world with amazement and admi-
ration at the daring of the men who could
carry such a desperate attempt to a tri-
umphant termination.

Morgan's plan was to fortify the island
of St. Catherine and make it the headquar-
ters of the freebooters, and his arrange-
ments were all made, when an English
man-of-war arrived with despatches which
completely upset his project. The Bucca-
neers were denounced as 66
and plundering rascals," and stringent
bloodthirsty
measures ordered to be taken against their
using any of the English possessions as
places of rendezvous. Morgan now aban-
doned all his ideas of further enterprises,
and settled at Jamaica, where he was ap-
pointed to a high government office, and
even knighted. In his new sphere he en-
joyed in security his ill-gotten wealth, and
is even said to have been very hard on any
of his old companions who came within
the clutches of the law.

It is believed he was eventually recalled, and imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he died.

821

the town of Arica, and Captain Sharp was killed in an unsuccessful attack on reinstated as chief. It was now apparent that, owing to their numbers being so successes, so it was resolved to sail for small, they could not hope for any great home. Furious tempests beset them, and they were driven south towards the antarctic polar regions, and far out of their proper course. Eventually they succeeded in regaining their old haunts in the West Indies, when they dispersed.

their desperate

more or less famous for their exploits, but Several other Buccaneer captains were towards the close of the seventeenth century a change came over the character of the Brotherhood. No longer enjoying the protection of the English and French nations, their spheres of plunder were greatly circumscribed. Many still continued their attacks on the Spanish possessions, but, finding their old ports of call closed to them, had difficulty in disposing for further raids. Finding their occupaof their booty and getting fresh supplies tion gone in their old haunts, the Pacific Captains Sawkins and Sharp were two here for many years isolated bands of became their favorite hunting ground, and other Buccaneer chieftains who made a Buccaneers continued famous record for themselves. With three modes of life with impunity. Gradually, hundred men they landed on the coast of however, the old association of the BrethDarien, and after a toilsome journey of ren of the Coast became broken up, and, twelve days, succeeded in crossing the though retaining the old names of Buccaisthmus. Here they managed to secure neers and Freebooters, they were in realships, and had the intention of again at-ity no longer members of the famous tempting the capture of the city of Panama, association, and, indeed, were little better but found themselves too few in numbers than common pirates. Spain being at to hope for success. For a considerable time they cruised about in the Pacific, capturing many ships and also attempting the capture of several coast towns. these latter enterprises, however, they In were not so fortunate, their numbers being quite inadequate to the magnitude of their operations. In one of these assaults Captain Sawkins was killed, and Sharp became commander-in-chief. A vote was then taken whether they would return over the isthmus to the West Indies, or continue in the Pacific, accumulating booty, and return by the Straits of Magellan by sea. The most of the Buccaneers adopted the latter plan, but sixty-three resolved to return overland, and separated from the others accordingly.

Captain Sharp and those who remained with him cruised along the South American coasts in two ships with varying success. At last the Buccaneers, for some reason or other, deposed Sharp and elected one of their number named Watling as their leader. Shortly afterwards Watling

peace with other European nations, they had no excuse for their depredations, and stringent measures were adopted for their was, however, so deeply engrafted in the suppression. The love of a lawless life hearts of many, that, despite the great risks run, they insisted on continuing their plundering proclivities. Instead of, as against the Spaniards, they now turned heretofore, directing their efforts their arms against all nations, and so became liable to the fate of the common pirate. Among the most famous of these new sea-robbers may be mentioned Bowen, Kidd, Avery, England, Davis, etc., and, strange as it may appear, two women, Mary Read and Ann Bonny. were forced to ask (and actually received) driven from the English possessions they protection from their old foes the Span iards, and for some time made the island of Cuba their headquarters. This did not last long, however, and every hand being turned against them, they were nearly all hunted down, and great numbers executed.

Being

Those who escaped dispersed themselves existence at a critical period, a by no over the globe, plundering indiscrimi- means inconsiderable share in shaping the nately, and in many instances murdering destinies of the West Indies, and destroythe crews of all ships they were able to ing the vast hold Spain had over the fairtake. It is satisfactory to know that most est portions of both North and South of them ultimately fell into the grasp of America. justice, and the worst of them met their deserts at the hands of the common hang

man.

So ended the celebrated Floating Republic of the Brethren of the Coast; its origin was the result of a comparatively trifling error on the part of the Spanish authorities; an error which was allowed to develop, and so cause the rise of an organization which proved a deadly foe to Spain, and inflicted incalculable injury on the Spanish supremacy in the New World.

The weak point of the Buccaneer community was the want of a head to direct its efforts into a fixed plan of procedure. The expeditions were fixed on and arranged very much by the force of circumstances, and without any combined scheme of operations against a common foe. Still, it is impossible to read the accounts by the old chroniclers of the prodigies of valor performed by these adventurers, and of their vast enterprises carried almost invariably to a successful issue in the face of unexampled difficulties, without feelings of wonder and admiration. There is also certain to be experienced a strong feeling of regret, to think that large bodies of men possessing such splendid capabilities for naval and military enterprise should not have had their talents directed into more legitimate channels. At the same time the instances of amazing bravery and bold enterprise are more than counterbalanced by the terrible accounts of useless bloodshed and rapine indulged in by the victors. It was an age of great crimes as well as great ideas, and the result amply testifies to the hard fact that the spirit of adventure when uncontrolled by law is certain to run to riotous excess and unrestrained passions. Such a condition of life is extremely unlikely to occur again, and although we may be somewhat dazzled by the glamour of the brute courage so conspicuously and invariably displayed, we must not forget that the prime motive for action was simply a base desire for wholesale spoliation and plundering, the proceeds of which were speedily squandered in gratifying the gross appetites and inbridled license of demoralized natures.

The Brethren of the Coast have left an enduring, though blood-red mark on the page of history. Despite their want of unity and other defects, they had, by their

The manners, laws, customs, and achievements of the Buccaneers form a most interesting study, well deserving of more attention than it would seem to have yet received. Their annals have all the excitement of romance coupled with the recommendation of verity, and in many respects hold a unique position among the records of the many stormy episodes in the world's history.

ROBERT ROBERTSON, F.S.A., SCOT.

From The Leisure Hour.

LITERARY COINCIDENCES.

THERE is no charge against a great author easier to make than the charge of plagiarism; there is none more difficult to prove. There have, no doubt, been unblushing plagiarists, thieves whose illgotten gains deceive no competent reader. But no work worthy the reading, and which retains a place in literature, has gained its reputation by false pretences. Every man of genius owes, no doubt, much to his predecessors; and the greater his power, the more able is he to make fruitful use of earlier writers. A poet, for example, is moved to sing himself by listening to other singers.

Cowley relates that by reading Spenser he became irrecoverably a poet, and there is scarcely an English poet since Spenser's time who has not acknowledged the largeness of his debt to the author of "The Faerie Queene." Not only did he stimulate the imagination as few poets have done, but he invented a new measure; and to the Spenserian stanza we are indebted for Thomson's "Castle of Indolence," and Byron's "Childe Harold." Yet this "poet of poets," as he has been truly called, gathered freely from every poetical field in the composition of his immortal allegory. He translated from Lucretius, he borrowed from Chaucer, as Chaucer borrowed from Boccaccio, he used with royal freedom the famous poem of Ariosto, he took his machinery from the popular legends about King Arthur; and yet "The Faerie Queene" is as remarkable for its originality as for its exhaustless beauty.

Shakespeare, too, in spite of his bound

less imagination, rarely trusts to that alone, his poem "Alcippe," has precisely the | and puts historians as well as poets under same order of reflections as Denham in contribution. In his "Julius Cæsar," for his "Cooper's Hill." "It would be exinstance, it is remarkable with what scru- ceedingly rash," he says, "to take for pulous exactness he follows the main facts granted that Maynard ever heard of Denof Cæsar's history as it is told by Plu- ham, or vice verså; such a supposition, tarch. Where the matter lies ready to his indeed, is extremely improbable, but the hand he never cares to invent, and his same ideas were common to both." Pope, marvellous power is seen in the way in too, modelled his "Dunciad " on Dryden's which commonplace incidents or prosaic“ MacFlecknoe,” but it would be unjust narratives are changed by his magic into the splendor of poetry.

[ocr errors]

on that account to accuse Pope of literary theft. The suggestion was due to Dryden, and so are some passages in the poem; but yet Pope's great satire cannot be said to add to its serious faults that of servile imitation.

Gray, Pope's most distinguished immediate successor in the kingly line of poets, has written what is probably the most popular poem in the language. The "Elegy has been frequently imitated, but the cop

Literary parallels abound in Shakespeare, and that they are also common in Milton is known to every reader who has taken up an annotated edition of that poet. Open Todd's "Milton," or the exhaustive edition of Dr. Masson, and you will find that for illustration as well as for expression Milton resorts without scruple to the masters of Greek and Roman literature, to the Italian poets, to the “sage and seri-ies are dead already, while the original is ous Spenser, and even as Mr. Pattison as full of life as it was a century ago. For has pointed out—to an obscure Dutch the suggestion of this poem Gray, one of poet. Indeed, Milton's adaptations, if we the most learned of poets, had not to turn may use that term, are frequent, but what to books. A walk on a summer evening he uses he assimilates and makes his own. through a rural village, and in a churchIt is Milton's majestic voice we hear yard, where "the rude forefathers of the throughout, never a mere echo. hamlet sleep," might suggest all the imagery of that beautiful poem. But if Gray did not take his idea of the "Elegy " from any foreign source, it is evident that his choice of metre was in some degree deter

[ocr errors]

Teipsum," from which copious notes are still preserved in Gray's handwriting. The heroic quatrain borrowed from the Latin elegiac had been also used by Dryden and Davenant, but Gray was the first to employ this impressive metre with a musical touch that is quite inimitable.

In searching, then, for literary coincidences and they are practically numberless it is well to remember that they are always to be found even in the noblest literature, and that a man of genius, how-mined by Sir John Davies's poem "Nosce ever original, is constantly and rightly indebted to those who have gone before him. It is possible, no doubt, to carry the search for coincidences too far, and to discover them where they do not exist; but there is ample scope for the critical reader without venturing even for a moment upon uncertain ground. All we can attempt to do here is to give some illustrations, chiefly from the poets and taken without any formal arrangement, of a sub-writer, the critics have discovered several ject that is as wide as literature itself.

[blocks in formation]

While we are among the eighteenthcentury authors, it may be observed that although Swift is a thoroughly original

works to which, in their judgment, he is indebted. This, however, may not be the case. There is a living French novelist who, in some of his works, seems beyond question an imitator of Dickens. He had even invented a dolls' dressmaker, being unaware that for many a long year, indeed since 1864, Miss Jenny Wren has been busily using her little fingers in making

dolls' clothes. In literature, as in the discoveries of science and of mechanical inventions, it sometimes happens that an idea is suggested or a discovery made by two persons, each of whom has an equal claim to originality. Of this, from the standpoint of literature, there is a striking illustration in Dr. Johnson's Rasselas,"

66

which he wrote in one week, to defray the | And though there is no literary parallel expenses of his mother's funeral and some in the case, it may not be amiss to measmall debts which she had left. This tion here for it exemplifies the interderapidity of composition is remarkable; pendency of imaginative writers - that but we may be certain that the story would Goethe acknowledges his own obligations not have been written in its present form to Oliver Goldsmith, whose "Vicar of if, more than twenty years before, Johnson Wakefield," at a critical moment of mental had not translated Father Lobo's "Voyage development, proved, he said, his best to Abyssinia," a narrative which made a education. strong impression upon him. But the most curious fact about "Rasselas " is its similarity in some respects to Voltaire's "Candide," a work composed with a very different purpose. Writing of the two books, Boswell states: "I have heard Johnson say that if they had not been published so closely one after the other that there was not time for imitation, it would have been in vain to deny that the scheme of that which came latest was taken from the other."

Look where we will in literature we see how the suggestions afforded by one work form the foundation upon which another is built. A writer, however independent, cannot walk without the help of his fellows. Cowper is a poet who, like his contemporary Crabbe, deserves the highest praise for originality, but Cowper's use of the heroic couplet is based upon that of Churchill, and his blank verse is founded upon the model of Milton. There are few books in the language more original than Charles Lamb's "Essays," and yet it may be confidently said that they would have been written in a different vein had he not been so familiar with the works of Sir Thomas Browne, and with such writers as Fuller, Cowley, and Donne. Cowley himself, by the way, to return for a moment to the seventeenth century, was the father of more than one poet who, without his genius, pursued the eccentric paths on which his Muse delighted to wander; and Cowley is largely indebted to Donne, whom, as Dr. Johnson says, it appears to have been his purpose to emulate. A really great writer conscious of his strength is never afraid to own his obligations. Sir Walter Scott nursed his genius among the Border minstrels, caught the lilt of his verse in the "Lay" from the more exquisite music of Coleridge's "Christabel," and acknowledged that his character of Fenella was suggested by Goethe's Mignon in "Wilhelm Meister."

Perhaps enough has been said in illustration of a subject that is well-nigh inexhaustible. There is one lesson to be learnt from it useful alike to critic and to reader-namely, that it is unreasonable to attribute plagiarism to great writers because their works are not wholly unlike the mass of earlier literature. It is far more reasonable to suppose that they should have points of resemblance. Literature, like nature, has a thousand different aspects; but just as in nature, with its infinite variety of charm, the same sky bends over all, and the same earth is under our feet, so poets and men of letters look, though with different eyes indeed, on the same world, and study the same humanity. They must work in accordance with the limitations of which every writer is conscious; and it is not surprising, the soil of the literary field being what it is, that the fruit produced by two independent laborers should be occasionally alike. What, then, it may be asked, is plagiarism? We answer that it is the appropriation of literary property, without the ability to use it. There are scores of versifiers who have in this way appropriated Lord Tennyson's style, or Mr. Browning's, or Mr. Swinburne's, and the result has been a feeble musical echo in the first case, a contempt of metre and grammar in the second, and an overflowing verbiage in the third. The plagiarist is the man who has nothing to say on his own account. The man of genius, on the contrary, when he borrows turns what he touches into gold, and gives a new beauty to what is beautiful already. He is content to use whatever materials he can gain access to, but he stamps upon them the impression of his own genius. And so it is that the poet, looking upon the objects that are common to us all, is able by the light of imagination to "flatter the mountain-tops," and to "gild pale streams with heavenly alchemy."

JOHN DENNIS.

[graphic]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

t

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »