for the ingenuity with which they had successively made use of Cooper's
original device. Indeed, the more delicate the perceptions of the critic
the less likely would he be to assert positively that all four authors
had not hit on the same effect independently. Thackeray may have taken
it over from Cooper, consciously or unconsciously; Besant may have
borrowed it from either his British or his American predecessor; and
Kipling may have been familiar with it in the pages of Cooper, of
Thackeray, and of Besant, and still have found amusement in giving a new
twist to an old trick. But it is perfectly possible that we have here an
instance of purely accidental similarity, such as keen-eyed readers can
discover abundantly in the highways and byways of literary history.

The theme of M. Paul Bourget's 'André Cornélis' is that of 'Hamlet,' but
in all probability the French novelist was not aware that he was
treading in the footsteps of the English dramatist until his own plot
had taken shape in his mind. A situation in 'Vanity Fair'--that of
Dobbin in love with the widowed Amelia and yet unwilling to break down
her belief in her dead husband's fidelity--was utilized in the
'Henrietta' of Mr. Bronson Howard, who was characteristically scrupulous
in recording on the playbill his indebtedness to Thackeray's novel; and
this same situation at about the same time had been utilized also in a
little one-act play, 'This Picture and That,' by an author who had never
doubted it to be of his own invention (altho he had read 'Vanity Fair'
more than once), and who did not discover how he had exposed himself to
the accusation of plagiarism until he happened to see the 'Henrietta'
acted, and to perceive the full significance of Mr. Howard's memorandum.

It deserves to be noted also that when Colonel Esmond broke his sword
before the unworthy prince whom he had served so long and so loyally, he
was only following an example which had been set by the noble Athos, who