"Yes--yes," replied his master; "Henry was my height, Ralph much taller."
"Then Mr. Henry is gone," replied the man, "for it was the short one who fell. The business must have got abroad, for a number of the duke's people were hurrying out--Hark! they are bringing him up hither."
"Take the body to the room where he slept last night," said the voice of the chamberlain upon the stairs; "I will go and inform my lord duke."
CHAPTER XVI.
In the vast, immeasurable depth of thought, there are so many resources, that one would suppose it were quite unnecessary for any one to repeat himself or to copy others, let him write as much as he will; and yet we see continually men of considerable powers of mind borrowing largely--I might even say systematically--from the works of ancient or cotemporary writers: not always the identical words, though sometimes those; not always the identical thought, though sometimes that; but, more generally, the ideas suggested by the thoughts of others, and so intimately blended with them as to be inseparable--judging themselves safe from the accusation of plagiarism upon the same plea which was put forth by a thief indicted for stealing a scarf, who proved he had only taken the gold fringe. I know many men who never compose--and they are men who write much, and well--without having open around them many works of precisely the same character as that which they are writing. It is a dangerous habit, and much to be avoided. Indeed, we pray against it every day when we nay, "Lead us not into temptation."
As to repeating one's self, it is no very great crime, perhaps, for I never heard that robbing Peter to pay Paul was punishable under any law or statute, and the multitude of offenders in this sense, in all ages, and in all circumstances, if not an excuse, is a palliation, showing the frailty of human nature, and that we are as frail as others--but no more. The cause of this self-repetition, probably, is not a paucity of ideas, not an infertility of fancy, not a want of imagination or invention, but that, like children sent daily to draw water from a stream, we get into the habit of dropping our buckets into that same immeasurable depth of thought exactly at the same place; and though it be not exactly the same water as that which we drew up the day before it is very similar in quality and flavor, a little clearer or a little more turbid, as the case may be.
Now this dissertation--which may be considered as an introduction or preface to the second division of my history--has been brought about, has had its rise, origin, source, in an anxious and careful endeavor to avoid, if possible, introducing into this work the two solitary horsemen--one upon a white horse--which, by one mode or another, have found their way into probably one out of three of all the books I have written; and I need hardly tell the reader that the name of these books is legion. They are, perhaps, too many; but, though I must die, some of them will live--I know it, I feel it; and I must continue to write while this spirit is in this body.
To say truth, I do not know why I should wish to get rid of my two horsemen, especially the one on the white horse. Wouvermans always had a white horse in all his pictures; and I do not see why I should not put my signature, my emblem, my monogram, in my paper and ink pictures as well as any painter of them all. I am not sure that other authors do not do the same thing--that Lytton has not always, or very nearly, a philosophizing libertine--Dickens, a very charming young girl, with dear little pockets; and Lever, a bold dragoon. Nevertheless, upon my life, if I can help it, we will not have in this work the two horsemen and the white horse, albeit, in after times--when my name is placed with Homer and Shakspeare, or in any other more likely position--there may arise serious and acrimonious disputes as to the real authorship of the book, from its wanting my own peculiar and distinctive mark and characteristic.
But here, while writing about plagiarism, I have been myself a plagiary; and it shall not remain without acknowledgment, having suffered somewhat in that sort myself. Hear, my excellent friend, Leigh Hunt, soul of mild goodness, honest truth, and gentle brightness! I acknowledge that I stole from you the defensive image of Wouvermans's white horse, which you incautiously put within my reach, on one bright night of long, dreamy conversation, when our ideas of many things, wide as the poles asunder, met suddenly without clashing, or produced but a cool, quiet spark--as the white stones which children rub together in dark corners emit a soft, phosphorescent gleam, that serves but to light their little noses.