The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1892-08-13
THE QUESTION OF PLAGIARISM.
Gems of Thought. 1t Appears, Ray be
Stolen if Put liz New Settings.

Gems of Thought, It Appears. Nay be
Stolen if Put liz New Settings.
No one has ever been able to de-
fine what plagiarism is, and there
fore it is unlikely that there should
be any general agreement as to what
makes a man liable to such a charge.
The question is p%erpetually recurring
in other fields Of literature as we'll as
in hOmiletics, and nc one has laid
down any scientific principle OF sutil-
cient c~learness to decide all disputes.
It cannot be that a man who IS in
debted to another for an idea Is
guilty of theft if he adapts it for his
own purposes; for, il such an appro-
priation be fraud, nearly all modern
writers have committed unpardon-
able sins against the ancicnts.
They may not have known every
thing down in JUDGE. but thc range
of literary and speculative ilcas was
remarkably extensive i'll Greece, and
if we are going to judge those OF our
writers-tO confine ourselves only to
our own natiOnality-who have owed
inspiration to Athens, we shall have
to condemn a good many illustrious
names. Chaucer, Spenser, Shake
speare, Milton. Dryden, Popc-whose
withers will be unwrung! A short
time ago Il critic took occasion to
draw up a list Of instances in which
the poet laureate had adopted
thoughts and expressions from his
predecessors. 1t was wholly a work
of supererogation, for Lord Tenny-
son would be the first to admit the
debt which he, in common with
other poets, owes to Homer and Vir-
gil. Classical phrases IRE taken
wholesale, as every student knows,
witness such lines as This way and
that dividing the swift mind" and
'She could not draw the quiet night
into her blOod"-the last a capital i'll
stance, for it assimilates and i'm
proves upon the original.
It is not freshness of thought
alone, but also freshness of treat
ment, which gives an author the
right to call his work original. If
we take the supreme instance of
Shakespeare we see at nee that the
real question in many Eases of this
kind is not where the writer got the
idea, but what he had done with it.
A poet, a novelist, an essayist, a
preacher can take a hint in a crude
state and SO transform it by the as
sociations and characteristics of his
own mind that he is justly entitled
to claim it as his own. He cannot
be called a plagiarist, at all events
for many of these so called thefts
are unconscious "reminiscences, un-
recognized as such, which are worked
into the texture of a mans own
thoughts and made instinct with his
own personality.
In novels and romances, again, we
have numerous instances of the same
free exchanges; no n ought to call
it by a harder name, unless he is
able to discount the frequency OF
literary condolences or possesses a
higher originality than that to which
most of lie can attain. Such re1ec-
tons, no doubt, were present in the
minds of the Congregational union
when they absolved Mr.. Woods from
the charges made against him. He
was no plagiarist. because, while
from DR.. Dykes valuable store he
selected a few homiltic gems, he pre-.
scented them to his congregation at
Clapton sparkling in some original
setting of his own.-London Tele.
o,anb