Cannot Assign Cloned String Array To Generic Type Array

I have the following code in which I am looping through the rows of one array (composed of Strings) and copying it to another array. I am using .clone() to achieve this and it seems work as it changes the memory location of the rows themselves. I did notice that the String objects are still pointing to the same location in memory in both arrays but I won't worry about that for now, at the moment I just want to understand why the array I am cloning is not successfully assigning to the other array.

This is the incorrect line: ar[r] = maze[r].clone();

My code:

private String[][] maze = {{"*","*","*"," ","*","*","*","*","*","*"},
{"*"," ", "*"," "," "," ","*"," ","*","*"},
{"*"," ","*","*","*"," ","*"," ","*","*"},
{"*"," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," ","*"},
{"*","*","*","*","*"," ","*","*","*","*"},
{"*","*","*","*","*"," ","*","*","*","*"}};
//private String[][] mazeCopy = copyMaze(new String[6][10]);
private <T> T[][] copyMaze(T[][] ar){
for (int r = 0; r < ar.length; r++){
ar[r] = maze[r].clone();
}
return ar;
}

My compiler says: Required: T[]. Found: java.lang.String[]

Since ar[r] is an array and .clone() also returns an array why is this line incorrect.