Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1890-07-18
cuRIosIr,ys OF PLAGIARISM.
The Habit OF LA ing Claim to other Poo
pies Literary Work.


The setting up of claim to the au-
thorship of Little Lord Fauntleroy"
by lady whose literary work has
never attracted public attention to her
self, must, says tho N. Y. World,
awaken interest in the phenomenon OF
n malady not yet classitiea hv the doc
tors, but familiar to all editors, critics,
and publishers.
The disease is akin to the opium
habit in its persistency with which it
resists treatment, and in its effects
upon the moral character of its victims.
The characteristic symptom of the all
ment is an irresistible disposition to
claim to have written other peoples
literary works.
1t has never been definitely determine
ed whether the disease is infectious or
not, but there is strong suggestion
that it is so in the fact that even the
most robust moral health seems to
afford no secure immunity from its at
tacks.
Let us consider a few typical cases.
The late DIR. Holland was the instiga-
tor of the SAKE Holm" stories. They
were written TO person or persons
consulted from time to time concern
ing them; he received them in manu-
script, suggested occasional changes,
many of which were made, and, as the
editor of the magazine in which they
were published, he drew checks inpay-
ment for them. He confidently be-
lieved, therefore, that he knew who
wrote the stories as certainly as he
knew who wrote his own poems. And
yet there were three entirely reputable
persons. all accounted truthful, each
of whom solemnly assured DR.. Hol-
land that he or she, in fact, wrote the
stories, each having different tale to
tell of the way in which the manu-
scripts were stolen.
William Cullen Bryant once told the
present writer that Il person who was
not born until years after the first pub
LEGATION of ''Thanatopsis" vehemently
claimed the authorship of that poem,
and went away indignant when Mr.
Bryant declined to surrender his own
pretensions in that particular.
The number of persons who wrote
Beautiful Snow" was estimated by the
late Richard Grant White as twenty
four, and everybody remembers how
many different persons produced 'All
Quiet Along the Potomac" and Rock
Me to Sleep"
The curiosities of plagiarism are end
less and sometimes very startling coin
cidences arise in connection with them.
The present writer, when editing "a
weekly periodical many years ago, had
offered to him an article which he had
himself written and published anony-
mously in daily newspaper two years
earlier. The article was written for a
temporary use, and there was nothing
in it to cause any reader to remember
it after the immediate occasion had
passed away. If the plagiarist had
offered his literary swag to any other
editor his theft would not have been
suspected. His i'll luck led him to SUBJ
nit his manuscript to the only per-
son in 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
a literal transcript of Dickens Christ
mas Carol" TO a New York editor for
sale, and when the editor objected that
the work was already widely known as
Dickens, the clergyman solemnly pro-
tested that he could not imagine how
the author of "Pickwick" could have
got at his manuscript, which had been
locked up for years.