Page:Cornwallis' Account of Japan.djvu/19

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7.

"bore a resemblance to a similar exploit of Bayard Taylor's" and, together with the Literary Gazette, was even more positive of passages in The After-journey, which, as the parallels indicated, were clearly stolen from Typee, written by the American, Herman Melville.

Further investigation along these lines confirms what the reviewers said of Cornwallis and the Narrative of the Perry expedition. The passages stolen by Cornwallis are numerous,[1] and three pictures instead of one may be traced to the pages of the Narrative.[2] Moreover, further exploration of past writings on Japan indicates that the originals of the remaining pictures used by Cornwallis came from Phillipp Franz von Siebold's Nippon, Archiv zur Beschreibung von Japan, which had been published in 1832.[3] What the reviewers said of


  1. Cf. Hawks, op. cit., I, xxi, 411 and Cornwallis, I, ix, 250-51; Hawks, I, xxiii, 442-43 and Cornwallis, I, vi, 167-68; Hawks, I, xxiii, 443, and Cornwallis I, vi, 170. These passages dealing with Japanese temples, clearly show plagiarism on the part of Cornwallis. Hawks, I, xxiii, 459, refers to Japanese pictures and the illustrations in Japanese books as reminding him of "the monochromatic designs upon the Etruscan vases." Cornwallis, I, ii, 73, uses the same phrase, but with reference to the designs on Japanese porcelain.
  2. The picture of the funeral procession is in Hawks, I, xxii, opp. p.426, and in Cornwallis, II, ix, opp. p.252. Cornwallis' picture of "A street in Simoda" (I, ii, opp. p.82) is taken from the "Street in Hakodadi" found in the Hawks' narrative, I, xxiii, opp. p.443. Cornwallis' "A Buddhist temple, at Nagasaki" (II, x, opp. p.206) is traceable to Hawks' "Chief temple, Hakodadi" (I, xxiii, opp. p.442). The reviewer in the Athenaeum apparently regarded Cornwallis' pictures as being genuinely his own.
  3. Cf. Cornwallis, I, frontispiece entitled "Ladies witnessing the performance of the actors. At Nagasaki" with the