another's quarry-is a species of free-masonry which is qualified entirely by the name of him who is caught in the fact.

It has been gravely asked who are original thinkers; even those who rank as philosophical writers adopt the opinions of their predecessors-some favourite theory of a former age; and having espoused it, they endorse the new creed with an enthusiasm as zealous as if it were one of their own creation. There are a few noble exceptions to the rule, however, for the honour of learning; the daring Florentine, for instance: a large proportion of our modern literature might be, with advantage to all parties, suppressed, since it possesses in the main but the questionable merit of metamorphoses.

The remark ascribed to Pope Ganganelli, that all books in the known world might be comprised in six thousand folio volumes, if filled with original matter-was, we think, an extremely liberal estimate.

One age battens upon its predecessor with gnome-like rapacity, and thus a host of pseudo-authors acquire an undeserved reputation. The quaint lines of Chaucer still apply with full force

"Out of the olde fieldes, as men sayeth,

Cometh all this new corne fro yeare to yeare,
So out of olde bookes, in good faith,

Cometh all this newe science that men lere."

Homer,* Dante, Rabelais, and Shakspeare, Chateaubriand styles the great universal individualities and great parent geniuses, who appear to have nourished all others. The first fertilised antiquity; Eschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Horace, Aristophanes, and Virgil were his sons. Dante in like manner was the father of modern Italy, from Petrarch to Tasso. Rabelais created the literature of France; Montaigne, La Fontaine, Molière, descended from him: while England owes all to Shakspeare. People often deny the authority of these supreme masters-they rebel against them, proclaim their defects, but with as much propriety as one might the spots on

* Homer's Gardens of Alcinous in the Odyssey, and the Elysium of the Eneid, were perhaps taken from the Mosaic account of Eden.

the sun's disc; they even accuse them of tediousness, and sometimes absurdity, while in the very act of robbing them and decking themselves in their spoils.

The student in his literary progress will derive no small interest in discovering, as he inevitably will, if he goes deep enough, the hidden germs of many of the happiest expressions which adorn the pages of our distinguished writers.

Almost every author of any standing in the ranks of literature may be regarded as a borrower, in a greater or less degree, from the commonwealth of letters. Even Shakspeare, Milton, Gray, are frequently indebted to their predecessors in "boke-craft."

"Shakspeare is more purely original; but it should not be forgotten, that in his time, there was much less to borrow, and that he too has drawn freely and largely from the sources that were open to him, at least, for his fable and graver sentiment: for his wit and humour, as well as his poetry, are always his own. In our times, all the higher walks of literature have been so long and so often trodden, that it is scarcely possible to keep out of the footsteps of some of our precursors; and the ancients, it is well known, have stolen most of our bright thoughts, and not only visibly beset all the patent approaches to glory, but swarm in such ambushed multitudes behind, that when we think we have gone fairly beyond their plagiarisms, and honestly worked out an original excellence of our own, up starts some deep-read antiquary, and makes it out, much to his own satisfaction, that heaven knows how many of these busybodies have been beforehand with us, both in the genus and the species of our invention!

While, however, it is allowed that they have freely used the "shadowed thoughts" of more obscure authors, it must also be remembered that they have made a noble restitution in presenting to their readers, not a depreciated capital, but a thought refined, embellished, and stamped with the impress of a brighter genius.

Some are guilty of grand literary larceny, as many know by

* Jeffrey.

Y

experience, and as Hood has so humorously described in the following lines:

"How hard, when those who do not wish

To lend that's lose-their books,

Are snared by anglers-folks that fish
With literary hooks.

"Who call and take some favourite tome,
But never read it through;

They thus complete their set at home,
By making one of you.

"I, of my Spenser quite bereft,

Last winter sore was shaken;

Of Lamb I've but a quarter left,
Nor could I save my Bacon.

"They picked my Locke, to me far more

Than Bramah's patent worth;

And now my losses I deplore,

Without a Home on earth.

"Even Glover's Works I cannot put
My frozen hands upon,
Though ever since I lost my Foote,
My Bunyan has been gone.

"My life is wasting fast away

I suffer from these shocks;

And though I've fixed a lock on Gray
There's gray upon my locks.

"They still have made me slight return;
And thus my grief divide;

For oh! they've cured me of my Burns,
And eased my Akenside.

"But all I think I shall not say,

Nor let my anger burn;

For as they have not found me Gay,
They have not left me Sterne."

Hudibrastic Butler compares a literary plagiarist to an Italian thief, that never robs but he murders, to prevent discovery. Another definition, somewhat akin, describes the plagiarist as a "purloiner, who filches the fruit that others have gathered, and then throws away the basket." *

* Tin Trumpet.

Plagiary had not its nativity with printing, but began when the paucity of books scarce wanted that invention. " * After all that may be urged on the score of accidental coincidences of thought and expression, it cannot be questioned that there has been perpetrated a vast amount of literary fraud.

Could we invoke the spirits of the departed, what pitiless plaints would be preferred against the spoliations of many a modern scribe, who, to avoid the trouble of thinking for himself, has chosen the more summary mode of allowing others to do so for him. Yet, after all, who should complain, when such a vast economy of time and trouble may be achieved by the labour-saving process. A poem, indeed, that formerly occupied in its construction twenty long years, can thus be produced, with scarcely inferior success, in as many minutes ; and the Herculean task that wasted the midnight oil of a devoted life, is now achieved in a few brief hours.

To suppose that fewer instances of moral delinquency have been perpetrated in the particular department of letters than in any other, would be, to say the least of it, very unphilosophical, since the risk of purloining the fruit of other men's brains with impunity, is unquestionably less than in that of most other depredations. If the pilferers of the purse are not more amenable to justice than are those who commit like infringements upon the productions of genius, the latter merit a no less rigid requital of rebuke. True, it may be urged in extenuation, that great scope should be allowed in determining the exact limits of literary property, since there must necessarily exist what is termed the "commonwealth of literature; yet we venture to premise that the most strenuous advocates of the plea, will, in the main, be found to be actuated by motives no less equivocal in kind than they are specious in pretence. These literary pilferers are too often adroit and shrewd enough to elude detection.

A strong resemblance may occur between two writers—if not, indeed, a strict identity both of ideas and language—which

* Brown.

may be purely accidental; but this must be an occurrence exceedingly rare. A bold or beautiful thought is sometimes likely so to impress the imagination, as to exist in the memory long after its paternity is forgotten, and thus become ingrafted into the mind so as to seem part of itself; such a case would certainly admit of great extenuation in the criminal code of literary jurisprudence.

"It is a

A writer, it is observed, may steal after the manner of bees without wronging anybody; but the theft of the ant, which takes away the whole grain of corn, is not to be imitated. A French writer* observes, "to take from the ancients, and make one's advantage of what they have written, is like pirating beyond the line; but to steal from one's contemporaries, by surreptitiously appropriating to one's self their thoughts and productions, is like picking people's pockets in the open street." And another extract we had marked insists that, greater crime to steal dead men's writings, than their clothes." Instances of petty larceny are undoubtedly more numerous than such as may be styled cases of grand literary larceny ; and we have even heard it advocated as a meritorious virtue in a writer, when he shall abstract from a previous author some acknowledged beauty, either of rhetoric or thought, and afresh incorporate it as his own, on the plea that a gem may often lie long obscured, and acquire redoubled lustre by the skill of the artist in the resetting.

The doctrines of expediency do not always run parallel with those of equity and even-handed justice; and since we are compelled to adjudicate the question by the moral standard, we must allow no meaner motives to govern our decisions in this matter. It is no easy task, amidst the prolific outpourings of the press of our day, to attempt an exposé of the many “dread counterfeits of dead men's thoughts" which living plagiarism is continually recasting and sending forth for,

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