Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1894-11-22
NEW UNDER THE SUN.
Literary Gems Have Merely Been
Borrowed.

Robert Louis Stevenson has just
come forward with charmingly
frank acknowledgment that his fas-
cinating story of Treasure Island
was written ON motives borrowed
from Robinson Crusoe'' and from
TALES OF Il Traveller" says the
Baltimore Sun. He feels he is also
indebted to Edgar Allen Poe for the
skeleton episode and for the stockade
to ''Masterman Ready" But for that
he cares nothing. 1T is he says,
my debt to Washington Irving that
exercises my conscience, and justly
so for l believe plagiarism was
rarely carried farther" Ralph Waldo
Emerson says in his brilliant essay
on Quotation and Originality
one of the finest pieces of plag iarism
one of the finest pieces of Plagiarism
in the language, it being Il mosaic
made UP of facts and ideas appropri-
ated from all creation-''Originals are
not original. There is imitation, mod
ell and suggestion, to the very arch
angels, if we knew their history
Ninety nine out of every hundred
readers believe, no doubt, that Abra
ham Lincoln's famous Gettysburg re-
mark THAT government of the peO-
pie, by the people, for the people,
shall not perish from the earth,' was
original with him. 1t was not. Dan
lei Webster used it in speech i'll
the senate thirty-three years before.
Public office is a public trust was
an old phrase to which Mr.. Cleveland
gave a new vogue. Charles Sumner.
in 1872, said: The phrase Public
office is a public trust has of late be-
come common property" And Thorn
as Jefferson used it sixty-fve years
before that
Shakespeare's was an original mind
the most original that has ever clothed
it's conceptions in English forms of
speech, according to the majority
opinion. Yet the scholars who have
explored Shakespeare will tell you
from whom he plagiarized his plots,
his dialogues and his songs. Con
science does make towards of us
all" Grand line, is it not? But here
is Pilpay, the Brahmin, who lived
at least 1000 B. S. Before Shakes
peare), saying: Guilty conscience
always makes people cowards.' GAS
good luck would have it," is Shakes
peare. LAS i'll luck would have it,
is Cemances. They were contem
pOraries. Who was the originator?
Neither, probably, what the dickens
is another of Shakespeare's original !
ities-perhaps. Thomas Haywood al
SO uses the expression in his play of
Edward W written, it may be, !
before The Merry Wives Of Wind
sor." Nick Bottom, describing his :
dream, says that the eye of man !
hath not seen, the ear of man hath !.
not heard" etc. But we find from |
the pen Of ST. Paul, from whom it
is undoubtedly plagiarized. (See l
Corinthians ii. g. Again, we read in |
Hamlet that diseases desperate grown
by desperate appliances are relieved, ,
or not at ALL" and feel the force of /
Shakespeare's great creative mind. /
Yet he has merely plagiarized an aph-
orism of Hippocrates, who said: !
Extreme remedies are very apprO- /
pirate for extreme diseases"
Goethe was frank to confess himself |
a plagiarist. He says: what would |
remain of me if this art of appropri- |
alton were derogatory to genius?
Every one of my writings has been
furnished to me by a thousand differ
ent persons. A thousand things, wise
and foolish have brought me, with |
out suspecting it, the offering Of their
thoughts, faculties and experience.
My work is an aggregation of beings
taken from the whole of nature; it .
bears the name of Goethe" Vol
taire, commonly credited with being
a highly original writer, is self
acknowledged plagiarist, and he de-
tends it boldly. ''Of all the forms Of
theft" says he, plagiarism is the
least dangerous to society" Moliere i
took his plots and dialogues bodily
from old Italian comedies. II con-