_Longfellow's Reaper and the Flowers_ (Vol. viii., p. 583.).--This charge
of plagiarism, I think, is not a substantial one. To compare Death to a
reaper, and children to flowers, is a very general idea, and may be thought
by thousands, and {64} expressed in nearly the same words which Longfellow,
and before him Luisa Reichardt, have used. The first line of the two
respective poems are certainly word for word the same, but that is all;
although the tendency of both poems is the same. Longfellow's poem is much
superior to that of L. Reichardt; for, while the former has a beautiful
clothing, colouring, and harmony, the latter is very crude, poor, and
defective. Longfellow's long residence in Germany has indeed rendered him
very susceptible to the form and spirit of German poetry, and hence there
exist in his poems frequently affinities as to general forms and ideas:
still, affinities arising from such causes cannot justly be termed
plagiarism, much less the accidental choice of a very widely existent,
natural thought. When Byron wrote his opening line to _The Bride of
Abydos_, he did not probably think of Göthe's
"Könnst du das Land wo die Citronen blühen?"
Byron was not a German scholar; and as the opening line is the only analogy
between the two poems, we may justly believe it natural for any one who has
lived in southern lands, to ask such a question. The charge of plagiarism,
I think, ought to rest upon grounds which evince an actual copying.