In Shelley’s great poem, Prometheus is not merely the Titan who,
having stolen fire from heaven to benefit man, was chained to a pillar while
an eagle tore at his vitals, he is the spirit of humanity. Man has (through
superstition) given the god, Zeus, great powers which he uses to enslave
and oppress man’s own mind and body. Ultimately the god is overthrown,
Prometheus, the spirit of man, is released, and the world enters upon its
progress towards perfection.
This and the following quotations are from a collection of references to
Mother-Earth.
Say, mysterious Earth! O say, great mother and goddess,
Was it not well with thee then, when first thy lap was ungirdled,
Thy lap to the genial Heaven, the day that he wooed thee and won thee!...
Myriad myriads of lives teemed forth from the mighty embracement.
Thousand-fold tribes of dwellers, impelled by thousand-fold instincts.
Filled, as a dream, the wide waters; the rivers sang on their channels;
Laughed on their shores the wide seas; the yearning ocean swelled upward;
Young life lowed through the meadows, the woods, and the echoing mountains,
Wandered bleating in valleys, and warbled on blossoming branches.
S. T. Coleridge (Hymn to the Earth).
An imitation of Stolberg’s Hymne an die Erde.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
As she dances about the sun.
For Nature ever faithful is
To such as trust her faithfulness.
When the forest shall mislead me,
When the night and morning lie,
When sea and land refuse to feed me,
’Twill be time enough to die.
Then will yet my mother yield
A pillow in her greenest field
Nor the June flowers scorn to cover
The clay of their departed lover.
Long have I loved what I behold,
The night that calms, the day that cheers;
The common growth of mother-earth
Suffices me—her tears, her mirth,
Her humblest mirth and tears.
So mayst thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop
Into thy mother’s lap.
Milton (Paradise Lost, XI, 535).
SONG OF PROSERPINE.
Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth
Thou from whose immortal bosom
Gods, and men, and beasts have birth,
Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.
If with mists of evening dew
Thou dost nourish these young flowers
Till they grow, in scent and hue,
Fairest children of the Hours,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.
Proserpine, daughter of Ceres, whilst gathering flowers with her playmates
at Enna in Sicily, was carried off by Pluto, also called Dis, god of
the dead. (For two-thirds, or, according to later writers, one-half of
each year, she returns to the earth, bringing spring and summer.)
That fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis
Was gathered; which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world.
(Paradise Lost, IV, 269).
And ... the rich winds blow,
And ... the waters go,
And the birds for joy, and the trees for prayer,
Bowing their heads in the sunny air....
All make a music, gentle and strong,
Bound by the heart into one sweet song;
And amidst them all, the mother Earth
Sits with the children of her birth....
Go forth to her from the dark and the dust
And weep beside her, if weep thou must;
If she may not hold thee to her breast,
Like a weary infant, that cries for rest;
At least she will press thee to her knee
And tell a low, sweet tale to thee,
Till the hue to thy cheek, and the light to thine eye
Strength to thy limbs, and courage high
To thy fainting heart return amain.
G. MacDonald (Phantastes).
Hold thee to her breast, give rest in death.
Ne deeth, allas; ne wol nat han my life; will not take
Thus walke I, lyk a restèlees caityf, restless wretch
And on the ground, which is my modres gate, mother’s
I knokke with my staf, both erly and late,
And seyè, “levè moder, leet me in! say, “Dear mother
Lo, how I vanish, flesh, and blood, and skin! waste away”
Allas! whan shul my bonès be at reste?”
Chaucer (1340-1400) (The Pardoner’s Tale).
Like a shadow thrown
Softly and lightly from a passing cloud,
Death fell upon him, while reclined he lay
For noontide solace on the summer grass,
The warm lap of his mother earth.
Wordsworth (Excursion VII, 286).
And O green bounteous Earth!
Bacchante Mother! stern to those
Who live not in thy heart of mirth;
Death shall I shrink from, loving thee?
Into the breast that gives the rose
Shall I with shuddering fall?
G. Meredith (Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn).
THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river....
“This is the way,” laughed the great god Pan,
(Laughed while he sat by the river,)
“The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.”
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,—
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
There is little merit in inventing a happy idea, or attractive
situation, so long as it is only the author’s voice which we hear.
As a being whom we have called into life by magic arts, as soon
as it has received existence, acts independently of the master’s
impulse, so the poet creates his persons, and then watches and
relates what they do and say. Such creation is poetry in the
literal sense of the term, and its possibility is an unfathomable
enigma. The gushing fullness of speech belongs to the poet,
and it flows from the lips of each of his magic beings in the
thoughts and words peculiar to its nature.
Niebuhr (Letters, &c., Vol. III, 196).
Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according
to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, “I will
compose poetry.” The greatest poet even cannot say it; for
the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible
influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness;
this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower
which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious
portions of our nature are unprophetic either of its approach or its
departure. Could this influence be durable in its original
purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the
results; but, when composition begins, inspiration is already
on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been
communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the
original conceptions of the poet.
Shelley (A Defence of Poetry).
Who would loose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night?
Milton (Paradise Lost ii., 146)
“Loose”—by committing suicide.
When the white block of marble shines so solid and so costly,
who remembers that it was once made up of decaying shell
and rotting bones and millions of dying insect-lives, pressed
to ashes ere the rare stone was?
(Chandos).
The madness that starves and is silent for an idea is an insanity,
scouted by the world and the gods. For it is an insanity unfruitful—except
to the future. And for the future, who cares—save
those madmen themselves?
... The gods that most of all have pity on man, the gods
of the Night and of the Grave.
Our eyes are set to the light, but our feet are fixed in the mire.
(Folle-Farine).
“If the cucumber be bitter, throw it away,” says Antoninus:
do the same with a thought.... There is no cucumber
so heavy that one cannot throw it over some wall.
Ouida (Tricotrin).
Antoninus, 120-180 A.D., the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher,
usually known by his first two names Marcus Aurelius, is the author of the
well-known Meditations. The quotation is from Bk. VIII., “The gourd
is bitter; drop it, then! There are brambles in the path; then turn aside!
It is enough. Do not go on to argue, Why pray have these things a place
in the world?” etc.
These quotations from Ouida may serve to illustrate the saying of
Pliny the Elder, “No book is so bad but some good may be got out of it”
(Pliny’s Letters, III., 10)—a saying which was no doubt true until printing
let loose on the world such a multitude of worthless writers.
WHEN WE ALL ARE ASLEEP
When He returns, and finds the World so drear—
All sleeping,—young and old, unfair and fair,
Will He stoop down and whisper in each ear,
“Awaken!” or for pity’s sake forbear,—
Saying, “How shall I meet their frozen stare
Of wonder, and their eyes so full of fear?
How shall I comfort them in their despair,
If they cry out, ‘Too late! let us sleep here’?”
Perchance He will not wake us up, but when
He sees us look so happy in our rest,
Will murmur, “Poor dead women and dead men!
Dire was their doom, and weary was their quest.
Wherefore awake them into life again?
Let them sleep on untroubled—it is best.”
CHORUS
Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;
Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance fallen from heaven,
And madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And life, the shadow of death.
And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand
From under the feet of the years;
And froth and drift of the sea;
And dust of the labouring earth;
And bodies of things to be
In the houses of death and of birth;
And wrought with weeping and laughter,
And fashioned with loathing and love,
With life before and after
And death beneath and above,
For a day and a night and a morrow,
That his strength might endure for a span
With travail and heavy sorrow,
The holy spirit of man.
From the winds of the north and the south
They gathered as unto strife;
They breathed upon his mouth,
They filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech they wrought
For the veils of the soul therein,
A time for labour and thought,
A time to serve and to sin;
They gave him light in his ways,
And love, and a space for delight,
And beauty and length of days,
And night, and sleep in the night.
His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travaileth;
In his heart is a blind desire,
In his eyes foreknowledge of death;
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.
Swinburne (Atalanta in Calydon).
She (the ship of Odysseus) came to the limits of the world,
to the deep flowing Oceanus. There is the land and the city
of the Cimmerians, shrouded in mist and cloud, and never does
the shining sun look down on them with his rays, neither when he
climbs up the starry heavens, nor when again he turns earthward
from the firmament, but deadly night is outspread over miserable
mortals. Thither we came and ran the ship ashore and took
out the sheep; but for our part we held on our way along the
stream of Oceanus, till we came to the place which Circe had
declared to us.
There Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims, but I drew
my sharp sword from my thigh, and dug a pit, as it were a cubit
in length and breadth, and about it poured a drink-offering
to all the dead, first with mead and thereafter with sweet wine
and for the third time with water.... When I had besought
the tribes of the dead with vows and prayers, I took the sheep and
cut their throats over the trench, and the dark blood flowed forth,
and lo, the spirits of the dead that be departed gathered them
from out of Erebus. Brides and youths unwed, and old men
of many and evil days, and tender maidens with griefs yet fresh
at heart; and many there were, wounded with bronze-shod
spears, men slain in fight with their bloody mail about them.
And these many ghosts flocked together from every side about
the trench with a wondrous cry, and pale fear gat hold on me....
I drew the sharp sword from my thigh and sat there, suffering
not the strengthless heads of the dead to draw nigh to the blood,
ere I had word of Teiresias....
Anon came up the soul of my mother dead, Anticleia, the
daughter of Autolycus, the great-hearted, whom I left alive
when I departed for sacred Ilios. At the sight of her I wept,
and was moved with compassion, yet even so, for all my sore
grief, I suffered her not to draw nigh to the blood, ere I had
word of Teiresias.
Anon came the soul of Theban Teiresias, with a golden sceptre
in his hand, and he knew me and spake unto me: “Son of Laertes
of the seed of Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, what seekest
thou now, wretched man—wherefore hast thou left the sunlight
and come hither to behold the dead and a land desolate of joy?
Nay, hold off from the ditch and draw back thy sharp sword,
that I may drink of the blood and tell thee sooth.” So spake he,
and I put up my silver-studded sword into the sheath, and
when he had drunk the dark blood, even then did the noble
seer speak unto me....
Odyssey, Bk. XI. (Butcher & Lang’s translation).
In this weird scene Odysseus is summoning the shade of Teiresias
from the under-world. He has with his sword to keep off the host of spirits,
including that of his own mother, whom the spilt blood has attracted—and
the hero is himself terrified at the awful spectacle.
What adds to the interest of such a passage is that to the ancient Greeks
this was no imaginary picture but a statement of actual facts. It will
be observed that the dead live in a dark land, “desolate of joy.”
To the little-travelled Greeks the ocean was a river.
For—see your cellarage!
There are forty barrels with Shakespeare’s brand
Some five or six are abroach: the rest
Stand spigoted, fauceted. Try and test
What yourselves call best of the very best!
How comes it that still untouched they stand?
Why don’t you try tap, advance a stage
With the rest in cellarage?
For—see your cellarage!
There are four big butts of Milton’s brew,
How comes it you make old drips and drops
Do duty, and there devotion stops?
Leave such an abyss of malt and hops
Embellied in butts which bungs still glue?
You hate your bard! A fig for your rage!
Free him from cellarage!
R. Browning (Epilogue to Pacchiarotto and other Poems).
Though the seasons of man full of losses
Make empty the years full of youth,
If but one thing be constant in crosses,
Change lays not her hand upon truth;
Hopes die, and their tombs are for token
That the grief as the joy of them ends
Ere time that breaks all men has broken
The faith between friends.
Though the many lights dwindle to one light,
There is help if the heaven has one;
Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight
And the earth dispossessed of the sun,
They have moonlight and sleep for repayment,
When, refreshed as a bride and set free,
With stars and sea-winds in her raiment,
Night sinks on the sea.
Swinburne (Dedication, 1865).
It is hardly possible for a younger generation to realize the almost
intoxicating effect produced upon us by Swinburne’s new melodies.
Although the Poems and Ballads were largely erotic, the curious fact is
that we were too much carried away by the beauty and swing of his verse
to trouble about the sensual element in it. That element was in itself an
artificial production and not a reflection of the poet’s own emotions, for
he was free from sensuality. It was with us more a question of music.
Swinburne himself preferred a musical word or line to one that would more
aptly express his meaning; and in the “Dedication,” from which the
above verses are quoted, several lines will not bear analysis. However,
this was one of our favourites among his poems.
O daughters of dreams and of stories
That life is not wearied of yet,
Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores,
Félise and Yolande and Juliette,
Shall I find you not still, shall I miss you,
When sleep, that is true or that seems,
Comes back to me hopeless to kiss you,
O daughters of dreams?
They are past as a slumber that passes,
As the dew of a dawn of old time;
More frail than the shadows on glasses,
More fleet than a wave or a rhyme.
As the waves after ebb drawing seaward,
When their hollows are full of the night,
So the birds that flew singing to me-ward
Recede out of sight.
He asks that his wild “storm-birds of passion” may find a home in
our calmer world:—
In their wings though the sea-wind yet quivers,
Will you spare not a space for them there
Made green with the running of rivers
And gracious with temperate air;
In the fields and the turreted cities,
That cover from sunshine and rain
Fair passions and bountiful pities
And loves without stain?
In a land of clear colours and stories,
In a region of shadowless hours,
Where earth has a garment of glories
And a murmur of musical flowers;
In woods where the spring half uncovers
The flush of her amorous face,
By the waters that listen for lovers
For these is there place?
Though the world of your hands be more gracious
And lovelier in lordship of things
Clothed round by sweet art with the spacious
Warm heaven of her imminent wings,
Let them enter, unfledged and nigh fainting,
For the love of old loves and lost times;
And receive in your palace of painting
This revel of rhymes.
Then come the final verses quoted above. These are somewhat detached
in meaning from the rest, and form a sort of Envoi: “Whatever
changes or passes, there is always some beautiful thing that survives.”
As might be expected Swinburne was much parodied (and indeed in
the Heptalogia and in the poems lately published he parodied himself).
The above poem has been cleverly parodied by a lawyer, Sir Frederick
Pollock. (Although parodies go as far back as the Fifth Century B.C.
I know of no other lawyer who, qua lawyer, has successfully taken a hand
in the game.) In his parody Pollock’s subject was the great changes effected
by the Judicature Act, when the old Courts of Common Law, Chancery,
and others were consolidated into one Supreme Court, and the various
classes of business assigned to different “Divisions.” Also owing to changes
in procedure, much of the old technical learning became obsolete. His
last verse is as follows (compare with the second verse quoted above):
Though the Courts that were manifold dwindle
To divers Divisions of one,
And no fire from your face may rekindle
The light of old learning undone,
We have suitors and briefs for our payment,
While, so long as a Court shall hold pleas,
We talk moonshine with wigs for our raiment,
Not sinking the fees.
Wulf died, as he had lived, a heathen. Placidia, who loved
him well, as she loved all righteous and noble souls, had succeeded
once in persuading him to accept baptism. Adolf himself
acted as one of his sponsors; and the old warrior was in the act
of stepping into the font, when he turned suddenly to the bishop
and asked, ‘Where were the souls of his heathen ancestors?’
“In hell,” replied the worthy prelate. Wulf drew back from
the font, and threw his bearskin cloak around him—“He would
prefer, if Adolf had no objection, to go to his own people.” And
so he died unbaptized, and went to his own place.
Charles Kingsley (Hypatia).
This story appears in several old chronicles (Notes and Queries, 7th Ser. X,
33), but the name should be Radbod. He was Duke or Chief of the Frisians,
and the episode probably occurred in Heligoland, from which island he
ruled his people.
I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one
of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is
disappointed when anything is less than the best; and I found
that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am
always full of thanks for moderate goods.... In the morning
I awake, and find the old world, wife, babes and mother, Concord
and Boston, the dear old spiritual world, and even the dear old
devil not far off. If we will take the good we find, asking no
questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts
are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway.
R. W. Emerson (Essay on Experience).
The bee draws forth from fruit and flower
Sweet dews, that swell his golden dower;
But never injures by his kiss
Those who have made him rich in bliss.
The moth, though tortured by the flame,
Still hovers round and loves the same:
Nor is his fond attachment less:
“Alas!” he whispers, “can it be,
Spite of my ceaseless tenderness,
That I am doomed to death by thee?”
Azy Eddin Elmogadessi (L. S. Costello’s translation).
A pine-tree stands all lonely
On a northern hill-top bare,
And, wrapped in its snowy mantle,
It slumbers peacefully there.
Its dreams are of a palm-tree,
Far-off in the morning land,
Which in lone silence sorrows
On a burning, rocky strand.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
Many a time
At evening, when the earliest stars began
To move along the edges of the hills,
Rising or setting, would he stand alone
Beneath the trees or by the glimmering lake.
... Then in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind,
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
Into the bosom of the steady lake.
Wordsworth (The Prelude, Bk. V).
THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE
GRINDER
FRIEND OF HUMANITY.
“Needy Knife-grinder! whither are you going?
Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order;
Bleak blows the blast—your hat has got a hole in’t,
So have your breeches!
“Weary Knife-grinder! little think the proud ones,
Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-road,
what hard work ’tis crying all day ‘Knives and
Scissors to grind O!’”
“Tell me, Knife-grinder, how you came to grind knives?
Did some rich man tyrannically use you?
Was it the squire? or parson of the parish?
Or the attorney?
“Was it the squire, for killing of his game? or
Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining?
Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little
All in a lawsuit?
(“Have you not read the ‘Rights of Man,’ by Tom Paine?)
Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids,
Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your
Pitiful story.”
KNIFE-GRINDER.
“Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir,
Only last night a-drinking at the Chequers,
This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were
Torn in a scuffle.
“Constables came up, for to take me into
Custody; they took me before the justice;
Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish-
-stocks for a vagrant.
“I should be glad to drink your Honour’s health in
A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence;
But for my part, I never love to meddle
With politics, sir.”
FRIEND OF HUMANITY.
“I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damn’d first—
Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance—
Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,
Spiritless outcast!”
(Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel,
and exit in a transport of Republican
enthusiasm and universal philanthropy.)
George Canning (The Anti-Jacobin).
Written in Sapphics and said to be a parody of a poem of Southey’s,
which was afterwards suppressed.
I loved him, but my reason bade prefer
Duty to love, reject the tempter’s bribe
Of rose and lily when each path diverged,
And either I must pace to life’s far end
As love should lead me, or, as duty urged,
Plod the worn causeway arm-in-arm with friend....
But deep within my heart of hearts there hid
Ever the confidence, amends for all,
That heaven repairs what wrong earth’s journey did,
When love from life-long exile comes at call.
R. Browning (Bifurcation, 1876)
The lady prefers Duty to Love, but she will remain constant to her
lover, and reunion with him in heaven will make amends for all. (In the
remainder of the poem Browning puts the case of the lover who, although
deserted, is expected to remain constant through life—and who falls. The
lady had disobeyed Love, because of the hardship and trouble that would
follow, and Browning, whose own married life had been a most happy one,
says this was no excuse.)
We are scratched, or we are bitten
By the pets to whom we cling;
Oh, my Love she is a kitten,
And my heart’s a ball of string.
Some man of quality
Who—breathing musk from lace-work and brocade,
His solitaire amid the flow of frill,
Powdered peruke on nose, and bag at back,
And cane dependent from the ruffled wrist.—
Harangues in silvery and selectest phrase,
’Neath waxlight in a glorified saloon
Where mirrors multiply the girandole.
R. Browning (The Ring and the Book, I).
This and the next five quotations are word-pictures (see p. 85).
“Oh, what are you waiting for here, young man?
What are you looking for over the bridge?”
A little straw hat with streaming blue ribbons;
—And here it comes dancing over the bridge!
James Thomson (B.V.) (Sunday up the River).
Down in yonder greenè field
There lies a knight slain under his shield;
His hounds they lie down at his feet,
So well do they their master keep.
Anon. (The Three Ravens).
When we cam’ in by Glasgow toun,
We were a comely sight to see;
My Love was clad in the black velvet,
And I mysel’ in cramasie. crimson
Anon. (O waly, waly, up the bank).
They see the Heroes
Sitting in the dark ship
On the foamless, long-heaving,
Violet sea,
At sunset nearing
The Happy Islands.
M. Arnold (The Strayed Reveller).
Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round, walks on
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
Coleridge (The Ancient Mariner).
The above are from a series of word-pictures (see p. 85.)
We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom; and certainly
there is a great difference between a cunning man and a wise
man—not only in point of honesty, but in point of ability.
Bacon.
Cunning, being the ape of wisdom, is the most distant from
it that can be. And as an ape for the likeness it has to a man—wanting
what really should make him so—is by so much the uglier,
cunning is only the want of understanding, which, because it
cannot compass its ends by direct ways, would do it by a trick
and circumvention.
John Locke (Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 1693).
A rogue is a roundabout fool; a fool in circumbendibus.
S. T. Coleridge.
It is only by a wide comparison of facts that the wisest full-grown
men can distinguish well-rolled barrels from more supernal
thunder.
George Eliot (Mill on the Floss).
Let its teaching (the teaching of scientific and other books
of information, the “literature of knowledge”) be even
partially revised, let it be expanded, nay, even let its teaching
be but placed in a better order, and instantly it is superseded.
Whereas the feeblest works in the literature of power (poetry
and what is generally known as literature), surviving at all,
survive as finished and unalterable amongst men.... The
Iliad, the Prometheus of Æschylus—the Othello or King Lear—the
Hamlet or Macbeth—and the Paradise Lost, are triumphant
for ever, as long as the languages exist in which they speak or
can be taught to speak. They never can transmigrate into new
incarnations. To reproduce these in new forms, or variations, even
if in some things they should be improved, would be to plagiarize.
A good steam engine is properly superseded by a better. But
one lovely pastoral valley is not superseded by another, nor a
statue of Praxiteles by a statue of Michael Angelo.
De Quincey (Alexander Pope).