Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1895-01-17
PLAGIARISTS OF NOTE.
Perfect Intellectual Digestion May
Perhaps Explain Their Frequent
OffenSes Against Originality.

seem to spend the greater part a
their lives in trying to belittle others
and particularly is this true in Liter,
allure where there are hundreds OF
| disappointed men of wide reading
/ but with little constructive or creative
ability, who search their more sue
ceSSful compeerS' work for evidences
of lack OF originality. and, when found
call out Stop thief 10 all the world
! President Cleveland has lately been
accused of plagiarism from Ton
| Moore. and the truth is that no public
man has ever spoken or Written much
who did not freely borrow and adapt
in some way from the storehouses OF
/ lfteIuuurs Robert Louis Stevenson
| has recently come forward with a
| frank acknowledgement that his fas-
/ clnatlng story of Treasure Island
was written on motives borrowed from
Robinson CruSOe' and from ..t.ales
OF a Traveller" He feels he is also in
debted to Edgar Allan Poe for the
skeleton episode and for the stockaGe
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 | believe plagiarism was rarely
carried farther" Mr.. Stevenson may
we'll confess his sins as a plagiarist
with a show of penitence that is mani
testify humorous. for he is in so nu-
merous company of fellow sinners
that if he had not appropriated any
thing from other authors his right to
be classified rs an author at I'll might
we'll be doubted. For they have all
done 1T. Ralph Waldo Emerson says
m his brilliant essay on 'Qu0tation
and Originality one of the
finest pieces of plagiarism in the Ian
guage, it being a mosaic made up Of
facts and ideas appropriated from all
observation-disclosures are not original
There is imitation model and sugges-
ton to the very archangels, if we knew
their history"
SilakeSpeare'S was an original mind
the most original that has ever clothed
IT'S conceptions in English forms of
speech, according to the majority of
opinion. Yet the scholars who have
explored Shakespeare will tell you
from whence he plagiarized his plots,
his dialogues and his songs Con
science doth make towards of us all"
Grand line, is it not? But here is
i -pay, the Brahmin, who lived 1000
B. s. (befOre Shakespeare saying:
Guilty cOnScienceS always make peo-
pie cowards." And Pilpay, we may
be sure, was not the originator of that
saying. Cain, after he had killed
Abel, probably first coined that
Shakespearean remark. CAS- good luck
would have it, is Shakespeare CAS- i'll
luck would have it, is Ceramics.
They were contemporaries. Who was
the originator? Neither probably
"What the dickens is another of
Shakespeare's originalities perhaps.
Thomas Haywood also uses the ex-
written, it may be, before ''The
Merry Wives of Windsor" Nick Bot
tom, describing his dream, says that
1.-THE eye of man hath noc seen, the
car of man hath not heard etc. But
we find that from the pen of st. Paul
from whom it is undoU btedly pEagiar
lied. See Corinthians H., 81 Again
we read in ''Hamlet' that ''diseaseS
desperate grown by desperate appli-
ances are relieved, or not at ALL and
feel the force of Shrlkespeare's great
creative mind. Yet be was merely
plagiariZinG an aphorism of Hippo
crates. who said: "ENtreme remedies
are very appropriate for extreme dis
cases.
circumstantial evidence of this kind
and one which the Boston Home
Journal thinks is most conclusive is
a line frequently ascribed to Pope.
Addison in ''The Campaign" wrote:
''And, pleased the Almighty's orders
to perform.
Rides in the wlIirlwind and directs the
Storm
In POpe's "Dunciad' written several
years later, occurred these lines:
"And, proud his mistG ess' orders to
perform,
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the
storm
And may not COwper have been in
fiuenced by one of these when, in his
Light Shining Out Of Darkness" he
wrote:
"GOd moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm
Goethe was frank to confess himself
a plagiarist He says: "What would
remain of me if this art of appropria-
tion We're derOgatory to genius ?
Every one of my writings has been
furnished to me by thousand differ
emit persons. A thousand things, wise
and foolish. have brought me- without
suspectirg it, the offering of their
thoughts, faculties and experience.
My work is an aggregation of beings
taken from the whole nature; it bears
the name of Goethe" Vo1taire, com
monty credited with being a highly
original writer, is a Self-acknOwledged
plagfarist and he defends it boldly.
"Of all the forms of theft" he says,
''pla giarism is the least dangerous to
society" Moliere took his plots and
dialogues bodily from old italian
comedies. He candidly repudiated any
respect for the prigs who cry ''pla gar
iSt' at every man who digs a good
thing out Of the mines of literature
and gives it in new dress to mankind
H.