MARK TWAIN AND BROWNING.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Does the difficulty of establishing a claim for originality not lie in the fact that where several minds are seeking the same object or effect, it is almost inevitable they evolve, inde- pendently of each other, the same idea ? Oliver Wendell Holmes, that master of apt similitude and analogy, held that it was impossible to tell, in a great many cases, whether an idea which suddenly suggests itself is a new conception or a recol- lection. In his Autocrat of the Breakfast Table he gives the instance of a comparison he once drew, which had often been quoted as his. This was that of the mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts. He confesses he never suspected this idea of being old, except from the fact of its obviousness, and affirms it was uttered by him in the firm belief that it was new, and wholly his own, and that he had good reason to think that he had never seen or heard of it when first expressed by him. It was shown him, however, that it occurred in a preface to certain political poems of Thomas Moore's published long before his remark was repeated. The origin of an idea is ever difficult to trace—in the words of Ecclesiastes, " Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new ? "—but according to the laws of literature " they who speak first hold the fee of the thing said."—I am, Sir, &c., T. HERBERTSON BAIRD., Conservative Club, Glasgow.
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