The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-08-22
IN DEFENSE OF PLAGIARISM
Many Eminent Persons Practice it and
 to the Benefit of the Reader

l tO tlls 1ofllell bl tIle ltedutIs
 The practice of plagiarizing from the 1 works of others Is universally con l demned; yet a one time 1t boasted a i professor of it's own, who taught not to ] initiate the best authors, but to steal
 from them. Richesource the professor
 in question, was deservedly held up to l public contempt by Isaac D'Israeli in
 his 'Curiosities of Literature" The i plagiarist, Richesource, called himself Moderator of the Academy of ! Philosophical Oratory," and he pub lished the principles of his art under the title Of 'The Mask of Orators; or, the Manner of Disgusting All Kinds of Composition; Briefs Sermons Panegyr- ics, Funeral Orations Dedications, Speeches, Letters, Passages" Sc. The egregious author very truly remarked
 that "all who apply themselves to po-
 lite literature do not always find from their own funds a sufficient supply to insure success;" an observation not less true now than when 1t was uttered
 He accordingly taught his pupils "to
 gather, in the gardens of others, those
 fruits of which their own sterile
 grounds are destitute" And although
 he dignified this fine art with the title
 of plagiarism'-a meaningless word it differed in no way from the literary
 picking and stealing of more modern
 times His plan was to take some suit able phrase, and then alter the order of the words and char4e the adiectives for others of similar meaning-mere litera- " carpentering, in fact. This accom- plished, he averred that "it becomes impossible even for the author himself to recognize his own work, his own genius, and his own style, so skilfully shall the whole be dsgused;' which. indeed. seems highly probable.
 That many great men have been guilty of occasional plagiarism is un- deniable; but posterity thinks none the less of them on that account. Moliere candidly admitted that he "prenait son
 bien" wherever he chanced to find 1t; and the use he put his acquisitions to more than justified the depreciation. When MT. Disrael called a cab ''the gondola of London" he borrowed the phrase from novel by Edward Whitty, a brilliant writer of that day. Mendels- sohn, too had described Cherubini as looking like an 'extinct volcano" long before MT Disraeli discovered in the House of Commons a whole row of tex tinct volcanoes. But these facts do not detract from the merit, at any rate in the way of appositeness, of the terms In their new setting It is easy to un- derStand nevertheless that the creators of fine phrases which make a mark would not always see the matter in this light. When MT. Disraeli's eulogium on the Duke of Wellington, including his essay on the character of General was shown to M. Thiers. that eminent statesman at once protested that it must be his; Ca doit etre de moi" he exclaimed though it afterward turned out to be Armand Carrels. When the Emperor Nicholas compared Turkey to a sick man he was plagiariZ- ing, unconscious perhaps, from a dis patch written by Sir Thomas Roe, Am bassador from England to Constantino- pie. in the time of James II. Turkey" said Sir Thomas. is like the body uf all old man crazed with vices, which puts on the appearance of health, though near it's end" Of course, the idea is much more tersely, and, therefore, pop ularly expressed in the term sick man" which thus acquired an individu- ality of it's own.
 Talleyrand is credited with many good things. but he was probably the greatest plagiarast of his time. Accord ing to contemporary writer, the great diplomatist was a diligent student of a text book in twenty-one volumes, en- titled "L'ImprOyisa tellr Francais" the best joke in which, we are told, was the title. From that work, however, he did not obtain the famous paradox, "Lan-