Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-11-11
STORIES OF PLAGIARISM.
Tho Habit of Claiming Other Peoples
 Literary Work.

Tho Habit of Claiming Othor Pcoplo'o
 Literary Work.
 The setting up of claim to the author ship of ''Little Lord Fauntleroy'' by a lady whose literary work has never attracted public attention to herself must awaken in terestin the phenomenon of a malady not yet classified by the doctors, but familiar to all editors, critics and publishers.
 The disease, says writer in the New York World, is akin to the opium habit i'll it's persistency, in the ease with which it is acquired, in the obstinacy with which it re- sists treatment, and in its effects upon the moral character of it's victims. The char acteristic symptom of the ailment is an ir- resistible disposition to claim to have writ ten other peoples literary works.
 It has never been definitely determined whether the disease is infectious or not, but there IS a strong suggestion that it is so in the fact that even the most robust moral health seems to afford no secure immunity from it's attacks
 Let us consider a few typical cases. The late Dr. Holland was the instigator of the "Saxe Holm" stories. They were written by person or persons perfectly we'll known to him. He was consulted from time to time concerning them; he received them in manuscript, suggested occasional changes, many of which were made, and as the editor of the magazine in which they were pub hshed he drew checks in payment for them. He confidently believed, therefore, that he knew who wrote the stories as certainly as he knew who wrote hls own poems. And yet there were three entirely reputable per sons, all accounted truthful, each of whom solemnly assured Dr. Holland that he or she, in fact, wrote the stories, each having Q different tale to tell of the way in which the manuscripts were stolen.
 MT, William Culleu Bryant opce told tho present writer that Q person who was not born until years after the first publication or ''Thanatopsis" vehemently claimed the authorship Of that poem, and went away in- diRnant when Mir. Bryant declined to sur render his own pretensions in that partic,- lar.
 The number of persons who wrote "Beau- dful Snow" was estimated by the late Rich ard Grant White nt twenty-four, and every body remembers how many different per sons produced "All Quiet Along the Potomac" and Rock Me to Sleep"
 The curiosities of plagiarism are endless, and sometimes startling coincidences arise in connection with them. The present writer, when editing weekly periodical many years ago, had offered him an article which he had himself written and published anonymously in daily newspaper two years earlier. The article was written for v 1t to cause any reader to remember it after the immediate occasion had passed away. II the plagiarist had offered his literary swag to any ether editor his theft would not have been suspected. His ill-luck led him to submit his manuscript to the only person Tn the country who could have known its origin and real authorship.
 A rural clergyman in New York had the courage upon one occasion to offer literal transcript of Dickens "Christmas Carol' to New York editor for sale, and when the editor objected that the work was al- ready widely known as Dickens, the clergy man solemnly protested that he could not imagine how the author of '.Pickwick" could have gotat his manuscript, which had been looked pp fon years in his parsonage desk. The editor was unable to aid him with any plausible conjecture.
 some years ago student in the Univer- sity of California made a collection of the best college magazine poems he could find and among the pieces was ono of unusual quality, whose author had been much ad- mlred threugnout the college world for his remarkable production A newspaper critic presently discovered that Alfred Tennyson had shamelessly stolen the poem and pub lished 1t as his own many years before its actual author had ceased to wear bibs at dinner.
 In the year 1873 or 1874 a woman commit ted suicide in Milwaukee who had attracted good deal of attention there as George Eliot. She had explained to those who in terested themselves in her literary career that her latest story, "John Andross," then running as serial, was written under the pseudonym of Rebecca Harding Davis. Yet the editor of the periodical in which the story was published had been all the while paving Philadelphia lady for the install ments, under the impression that she was Mrs. Rebecca Harding Davis, and that the story was really her work and not George Eli0f,s at all