―180―For the Literary Magazine.
on plagiarism.
PITIABLE is his lot that is im-
pelled, by some casual or extraneous
―181―
motive, to write, without possessing
either sentiments or subject. This
is, at present, exactly my situation.
Having taken up the pen to write
an essay, I made a short pause, and
put up an earnest invocation to the
muses for their succour, in a time
of lamentable need. They have
been deaf to my entreaties, unless,
indeed, it has been by their inspira-
tion or suggestion that my wife, a
moment after, made her appear-
ance, and seeing my musing posture,
and bewildered look, enquired into
the subject of my meditations.
I explained to her the object of
my secret prayer; but, instead of
seconding my supplication, she told
me the prayer was superfluous, for
I had only to turn to any current
book of essays, and marking with a
pen in the margin what chanced to
please me, varying perhaps the title
and the signature, send it to the
press as my own. If I were parti-
cularly concerned to keep the secret
from the type-setter, I had only to
transcribe the essay.
On my observing how extremely
liable to detection such an imposture
would be, she answered, that the
danger was much less than I expect-
ed; that the danger implied two cir-
cumstances, which very rarely oc-
curred, namely, that the reader had
ever read the essay before, or that,
having read it, he would recollect
it sufficiently to recognize any re-
semblance in the one before him.
For one that discovers the fraud,
thousands will be blind to it. And
should you be detected, what then?
It is not you, who are an anonymous
personage, that gains by the decep-
tion, but they who read it as origi-
nal that gain. If they see that it has
been published before, they may
read or forbear as they please; but
if the belief of its novelty induces
them to read, they have been de-
ceived into an instructive and de-
lightful path. Print one of the finest
papers from the Guardian or Spec-
tator in a popular newspaper, ac-
knowledging the source from which
it comes, and not one of its thousand
subscribers will read; on the con-
trary, they will fiercely declaim
against the folly and impertinence of
republishing such stale and hack-
neyed stuff. But publish it with all
the apparatus of an original produc-
tion, and every body shall be delight-
ed and instructed, and wonder who
it is among his countrymen that
writes so wittily and morally. To
all but some forty out of the thou-
sand, it will be absolutely new; they
will now read it for the first time.
Among this forty there shall be ten,
perhaps, who have some faint notion
that they have seen this, or some-
thing like it, before, while one or
two, who have memories more lively
and tenacious than is common, or
whose attention has been, by chance,
particularly fixed, in early life, by
this essay, shall immediately recog-
nize it. This one's vanity may pos-
sibly induce him to inform the mul-
titude of less industrious readers of
their mistake: but no harm will
accrue from this. All the pleasure
and instruction which the essay is
calculated to afford will already be
afforded by it, and this information
can only operate by recommending
to the carless or forgetful reader the
original collection at large.
We have lately had an instance,
continued my wife, to this effect.
There is no collection of essays in
English literature more familiarly
known than the “Idler.” And yet
one of its essays was lately published
and republished in some American
newspapers as an original letter
from the doctor to a lady, never be-
fore printed. I suppose some good
girl had transcribed it for her own
use, and being found among her
papers by survivors, was naturally
supposed by them to be original
How very few of the readers of this
newspaper remembered to have
ever read this performance before;
and those most familiar with John-
son could probably go no further
than to say, that they had suspected
they had somewhere met with this
or that paragraph or sentence be-
fore.
―182―For all this, said I, I cannot fully
approve of your expedient. If the
deception does no injury to others,
but even benefits the world at large,
I am afraid the injury done to my
own character and feelings, by any
deception, however plausible and
palliable, will be more than equiva-
lent.
You are marvellously punctilious,
she answered. This rigid adher-
ence to veracity, this forbearance
to disguise or violate the truth,
when no personal interest can pos-
sibly be suspected to influence you,
and when others can derive from
it nothing but advantage, is entirely
unknown in real life. However, to
save your scruples, you may publish
it merely without acknowledging the
source it comes from. You are
surely at liberty, consistently with
every rule, to repeat the sentiments
of others, in this form, leaving your
readers at liberty to ascribe it to
whom they please. You are not
bound to supply other people's de-
fects of judgment or memory.
Still, said I, this is only palliating
the fraud. To deceive, by silence or
by words, by visible or audible signs,
by speech, gesture, or look, are all
upon a level with each other. The
guilt consists in the intention and
design; the means of executing the
design are nothing. No man is cul-
pable who misleads another without
intending it, and every one is culpa-
ble who intends to deceive, even
though the means he uses to effect
his purpose should produce a con-
trary effect, and open the eyes they
were designed to shut.
Well, replied she, Heaven grant
that you and I may never have a
more flagrant guilt to answer for
than that of deceiving others in this
manner.
My dear, said I, I echo your
prayer; yet I am very sadly sure
that many more serious offences
than this will rise up against me:
but shall a man who pilfers six-
pence from his neighbours excuse
himself, by saying that he had al-
ready committed murder? He that
is faulty already has a stronger rea-
son than the absolutely innocent,
for not augmenting his criminal list.
They that offend in this way, said
my wife, still maintaining her point,
are at least kept in countenance by
a numerous fellowship in guilt…..
What think you of Virgil, and in-
deed of all the Roman poets, who
are little more than translators
from the Greek, and who yet never
acknowledged their debts. I need
not remind you of the unlimited pil-
lage which the modern Latin poets
and prosaists have made upon the
treasury of ancient similies, allu-
sions, images, phrases, and epithets.
Nobody ever thought of arraigning
for literary felony or imposture
our Milton, though his great work
abounds in every page with thoughts
and images taken, without acknow-
ledgment, from Roman, Italian, and
English poets, who preceded him.
And what an arrant thief was
Shakespeare! How very few of
his plots and scenes are purely pro-
ducts of his own invention. To
previous annalists, chroniclers, and
play-wrights, in every tongue with
which he was acquainted, he made
no scruple to apply when in want of
matter. Nor does it appear that he
took any measures to prevent the
natural inference that ignorance and
inexperience, upon perusing his
works, could not fail to draw. All
the guilt of deceiving by silence and
forbearance is imputable to Shake-
speare, in as large a measure as to
any mortal that ever wrote…..
As my wife never yet engaged in
a dispute without having the last
word, I wisely forbore to make any
comments on her last speech. Here
then the debate ended, but my scru-
ples being in no degree abated, and
the muses continuing as deaf as ever
to my supplication, I find I must,
however reluctantly, relinquish my
design, and lay down the pen with-
out writing an essay. Hereafter,
perhaps, the tide of fancy may more
easily flow.