cribs with the utmost composure from the author he has vilipended. Still, we must not set down every coincidence as borrowing. Thucydides himself insists on the recurrence of the same or similar events in a history of which human nature is a constant factor. "Undo this button" is not necessarily a quotation from King Lear. "There is no way but this" was original with Macaulay, and not stolen from Shakespeare. "Never mind, general, all this has been my fault," are words attributed to General Lee after the battle of Gettysburg. This is very much the language of Gylippus after the failure of his attack on the Athenian lines before Syracuse. How many heroic as well as unheroic natures have had to say "Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa." [Note: Thuc. 7, 5, 2: [Greek: ouk ephe to hamartema ekeinon all' heautou genesthai.]] Situations may recur, sayings may recur, but no characters come back. Nature always breaks her mould. "I could not help muttering to myself," says Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria, "when the good pastor this morning told me that Klopstock was the German Milton, 'a very _German_ Milton, indeed!!!'" and Coleridge's italics and three exclamation points may answer for all parallelisms. When historical characters get far enough off it may be possible to imitate Plutarch, but only then. Victor Hugo wrote a passionate protest against the execution of John Brown, in which he compared Virginia hanging John Brown with Washington putting Spartacus to death. What Washington would have done with Spartacus can readily be divined. Those who have stood nearest to Grant and Sherman, to Lee and Jackson, the men, fail to see any strong resemblance to leaders in other wars. Nicias, in the Peloponnesian war, whose name means Winfield, has nothing in common with General Scott, whose plan of putting down the rebellion, the "Anaconda Plan," as it was called, bears some resemblance to the scheme of Demosthenes, the Athenian general, for quelling the Peloponnese. Brasidas was in some respects like Stonewall Jackson, but Brasidas was not a Presbyterian elder, nor Stonewall Jackson a cajoling diplomatist. IV