ART. IV. - PLAGIARISM AND THE LAW OF QUOTATION. "Convey, the wise it call: Steal? foh! a fico [fig] for the phrase !"—Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I, Scene 3. SHERIDAN, who was born in 1751 and died in 1816, published a comedy, entitled "The Critic," in which we find the following: "Steal? to be sure they may, and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children-disfigure them to make 'em pass for their own." The priority of this just rebuke belongs, however, to Churchill, Sheridan's predecessor by some twenty years. Thus Churchill: "Who to patch up his fame, or fill his purse, Still pilfers wretched palms, and makes them worse; To those who steal after this fashion we commend the words. of Milton: "For such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrower, among good authors is accounted Plagiare." Of such Samuel Butler said: "A literary plagiarist is like an Italian thief, who never robs but he murders to prevent discovery." Some of our most distinguished novelists and poets, and even divines, seem to have a bad notoriety in this department of literary malpractice.† Charles Reade, it is said, stands upon the very apex of the pedestal of infamy in this regard. "Never Too Late to Mend" is culled from parliamentary blue books. "White Lies" is charged with being a double plagiarism from two French authors. It is also alleged that "Clouds and Sunshine" is from "Claudie," by George Sand. His "Wandering *Iconoclast. "Taxation no In 1775 Dr. Samuel Johnson published his famous pamphlet on Tyranny," etc. "No sooner," says Wesley's last biographer, "was it issued than, with or without leave, Wesley abridged it, and, without the least reference to its origin, published it as his own, in a quarto sheet of four pages, with the title, 'A Calm Address to our American Colonies. By Rev. Mr. John Wesley, M.A. Price, one penny.' This was an injudicious and unwarrantable act, except on the supposition that there was some secret understanding between him and Johnson, and even then the thing had too much the aspect of plagiarism to be wise."-TYERMANN, vol. iii, p. 186. Heir" we read in an old number of the "Gentleman's Magazine," and was in print, we imagine, before Mr. Reade was born. Many remember the immense sensation produced by the first appearance of "Griffith Gaunt." It was universally regarded as the masterpiece of its gifted author. It was extolled for its " freshness," its "frankness," and its "originality." It was spoken of as "delicious," as showing the author's "rare gift of creating!" Yet this model, so wonderful in its "originality," is charged with being a literary larceny, a double plagiary of the most barefaced kind. A writer in "Frazer's Magazine " has shown, by a most formidable array of parallel passages, from "Tristram Shandy" on the one side and "The Caxtons" on the other, that Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton has scarcely a right to regard the latter work as his own at all. In view of the rank, of Sir Edward, and his literary celebrity, the writer asks, "If these things are done in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" and as though the Scriptures furnished him with the most forcible material for rebuke, he concludes by declaring himself in the dilemma of the patriarch-" The words are the words of Sterne, but the voice is the voice of Bulwer."* The most distinguished offenders against the laws of literary honesty have been men for whom no possible excuse can be framed. Disraeli once, with cutting satire, advised Sir Robert Peel to "stick to quotation," adducing as the reason that "he never quoted any passage that had not previously received the meed of parliamentary approbation." How strange that a satirist so subtle as Disraeli, with a pen of his own so facile and linked to such illimitable thought, should stoop so low that, when called upon for an enlogium of the Iron Duke, he should steal it ready-made from the pen of Thiers! If this had been the only theft, we might have supposed that he was the victim of the common carelessness which sometimes intends to "A great poet may really borrow; he may even condescend to an obligation at the hands of an equal or inferior; but he forfeits his title if he borrows more than the amount of his own possession. The nightingale himself takes somewhat of his song from birds less glorified; and the lark, having beaten with her wings the very gate of heaven, cools her breast among the grass. The lowlier of intellect may lay out a table in their field, at which table the highest one sometimes may be disposed to partake: want does not compel them. Imitation, as we call it, is often weakness, but it likewise is often sympathy."-LANDON. give "honor to whom honor is due," but fails. In this case we fear it was a habit. A paper, from whose statements it were idle to appeal, says: "The right honorable gentleman has paid us the high compliment of printing as his own some striking reflections of a celebrated historian which originally appeared in this journal." The peroration of his speech on the third reading of the Corn Bill is a mere paraphrase of the concluding paragraph of Mr. Urquhart's "Diplomatic Transactions in Central Asia." But few men have been supposed to be more original than Lord Brougham, yet Lord Melbourne says of one of his labored eulogiums on the virtue of justice, that it "was a most brilliant passage; but he thought he had heard some of it before. No doubt these were fine expressions, but they put him in mind, however, of Sheridan's celebrated eulogium on the liberty of the press; but they were by no means the worse for that." This criticism of Melbourne's is adduced by a writer in the "Examiner" as an illustration of the wit of the critic. "It is the nonchalant, easy tilt of the hilt dropping the man run through the body off the sword." A coarse antagonist would have pinned him; Lord Melbourne let him fall. If we go a few steps higher upon the ladder of literary faine, it is only to breathe an air more heavily laden with the dust of plagiarism than that which irritated our literary nostrils on the lower rounds. It was the opinion of Sir Walter Scott that Sterne owed much of his brilliancy to his petty pilferings from birds of much inferior feather. An acute critic, however, has shown that the pretended parallel passages are few in number, and many of them only elaborated hints. It is impossible to deny, however, that Sterne drew his learning from Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," and not from the originals, and there are pages of his works belonging to other authors. The most remarkable theft is the complaint against copyists. It is singular that he should plagiarize an invective against plagiarism. An apologist has said: "The appropriation of three or four paragraphs without acknowledgment may detract from his candor, but not from his genius." We will admit his genius, but condemn his taste. It argues a sad perversion of genius that he should imitate the defects of Rabelais. Le Sage's masterpiece, "Gil Blas," has been said to be an imitation. Voltaire asserted that it was translated or stolen from the Spanish of "Vincent Espinel," and the charge has been repeated by a Spanish Jesuit named Isla. But the Comte de Neuchâteaux, in a dissertation read before the French Academy in 1818, proves that the work named by Voltaire "bears no resemblance to Gil Blas,' either in subject, form, or style." Moore, in his "Life of Byron," says that he observed a volume in his friend's gondola, with a number of papers marked between the leaves. "I inquired of him," he says, "what it was!" "Only a book," he answered, "from which I am trying to crib, as I do whenever I can; and this is the way I get the character of an original poet." On taking it up and looking at it, Moore exclaimed, "Ah, my friend Agatha!" "What!" cried Byron archly, "you have been beforehand with me there, have you?" In Moore's opinion, Byron, in imputing to himself premeditated plagiarism, was but jesting. Still, he was inclined to think that it was Byron's practice to thus excite his vein by the perusal of others on the same subject or plan, from which the slightest hint caught by his imagination, as he read, was sufficient to kindle there such a train of thought as, but for that spark, had never been awakened, and of which he himself soon forgot the source.* Byron represents "Childe Harold," on leaving England, as singing this song: "Adieu! adieu! my native shore Fades o'er the waters blue; The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar, Yon sun that sets upon the sea We follow in his flight; My native land, good-night. "A few short hours, and he will rise To give the morrow birth, And I shall hail the main and skies, But not my mother earth. Deserted is my own good hall, Its hearth is desolate; Wild weeds are growing on the wall, My dog howls at the gate." * See "Moore's Life of Byron," vol. iv. The original of this is said to have been written by a poet named Wolfgang, and published by him in Munich in 1764. The first two verses of the given poem run as follows: "Leb wohl! leb wohl mein Mutterland, Gehült ins Blau der Luft; Der Nachtwind seufst; von Ufer rauschts; Die Sonne zieht nach Westen hin; Sie sinkt an ihrer Pracht; "Nach wenig Stunden zeigt sie uns Und Himmels glanz, und grüne See. Die Hall ist ode, und kalt der Herd, Verlassen alles, und Das Unkraut wachst am Gartenzaum, Und trauernd heult mein Hund." * It is embarrassing, when attempting to account for this wonderful similarity, to remember that Byron did not know a word of German. The English version, certainly, has the advantage, in a literary point of view, over its German rival.† Macaulay, in his severe criticism of Montgomery's poem entitled "Satan," convicts the poet of the grossest plagiarism. An author could hardly be more terribly scathed than is this unfortunate, when the great essayist says of his writings that "they bear the same relation to poetry which a Turkey-carpet bears to a picture. There are colors in a Turkey-carpet out of which a picture might be made; there are words in Mr. Montgomery's poetry, which, when disposed in certain order and combinations, have made, and will again make, good poetry." It had been affirmed of Dante "that he had borrowed much from Virgil. The fate of his suicides, for instance, is clearly taken from the Polydorus of the "Eneid." Some other features of the scenery of Inferno are also borrowed. Much of the "Vision" has been attributed to the "Somnium Scipionis' "Augsburg Gazette," quoted by "N. Y. Post." "Byron's 'Manfred' is 'Faust' in an English dress; his 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers' is modeled after the 'Dunciad;' his 'Art of Poetry' is worked out of a suggestion made by Dr. Johnson; his 'Sardanapalus' is a shadow of Otho in 'Juvenal;' and his 'Don Juan,' a copy of the Page in 'The Marriage of Figa. ro.'"-Anon. |