Museum, I am able to state that where Kirkby's dependence upon an earlier writer is referred to at all—as in the article in the 'Dictionary of National Biography'—the case for plagiarism is not put half strongly enough. Kirkby did not merely borrow hints, ideas, episodes; he stole the entire book, adding, expanding and slightly rearranging in places, but adhering to the plan of his predecessor and sometimes retaining his actual phraseology for paragraphs and pages together. To illustrate these statements would necessitate the reproduction of a number of lengthy passages, and space cannot here be spared for such an undertaking. I have said this much to make clear to any reader of Gibbon's Memoirs, or Scott's fragment of autobiography, why I now disregard Kirkby's work and confine myself to what was evidently its immediate source and model.[1]
The writer of the 'History of Autonous,' then, opens his narrative by telling us how he became acquainted with that young nobleman, at the University of Eumathema, in the Kingdom of Epinoia. He is invited to take a short pleasure trip with him in his barge up the river. It is on this occasion that Antonous entertains his guest with the story of his life.
His father, Eugenius, chief of one of the most ancient houses in the kingdom, had married Paramythia, a young lady of 'quality nothing inferior to himself.' About the time of Autonous's birth, a rebellion broke out in Epinoia. It was promptly quashed; but, through 'the underhand Dealing of some ill-designing Persons,' enemies of Eugenius, he was arrested, tried and found guilty of treason. He was, therefore, condemned to banishment and the forfeiture of his estates.
With his wife, child and a couple of servants, the unfortunate nobleman sets sail for a distant land; the ship goes to pieces in a storm, and all on board perish, except Eugenius, Paramythia and the baby, who are east upon an uninhabited island. The father manages, like Robinson Crusoe, to save some necessaries and a number of miscellaneous articles from the wreck, and, with these, a little dog, which afterwards plays an important part in the story.
On examination of the island, it is found that, most fortunately, there are no 'noxious animals' or venomous creatures there, 'but multitudes of goats, deer and fowls of every kind,' furnishing abundance of provision. Eugenius hunts with bow and arrow and presently builds a cottage, in a grove of trees and within view of the sea, in the hope, like Enoch Arden, of sooner or later sighting a chance sail. But the
- ↑ 'Autonous' occupies 117 pages; 'Automathes,' 284. The difference is due partly to Kirkby' tendency to amplification, and partly to a long critical introduction containing a good deal of political disquisition, not at all to the point, and incorporating the machinery of a manuscript discovered in a cylinder, which adds neither to the clearness nor to the interest of the subsequent narrative. (Of course, as we do not know who wrote 'Autonous' there is the chance that this was a first draft of the later and longer book, by Kirkby himself. But this does not seem likely.)
