There is very little originality in this world. Even among the greatest thoughts expressed by famous philosophers, there are very few that had not been heard before in some form or other. It is the pithy way in which they are expressed by such men as La Rochefoucauld, La BruyÈre, and Balzac that made the reputation of these great writers. The characteristics of man and woman have always existed, just as has their anatomy, and the dissector of the human heart cannot invent anything new any more than the dissector of the human body. We all know these characteristics, but what we like is to see a philosopher present them to us in a new shape.

Pascal says that the greatest compliment that can be paid to a book, even to a thought, is the exclamation, 'I could have written that!' and 'I could have said that!' In fact, the author whom we admire most is the one who writes a book that we 'could' have written ourselves. And we say 'bravo' when a philosopher gives us a thought of our own, only better expressed than we could have done it, or when he confirms an opinion that we already held ourselves.

No; there is nothing original, not even the stories that we hear and tell in our clubs. They have been told before. I forget who said that there were only thirty-five anecdotes in the world, seventeen of which were unfit for ladies' ears.

Even the characters of fiction are not original. The novelist is, as a rule, none but a portrait painter, possessed of more or less originality and talent. Charles Dickens said that there was not a single personage of his novels whom he had not drawn from life. Thackeray and Balzac, two observers of mankind of marvellous ability, said the same. Racine borrowed of Sophocles and Euripides, MoliÈre of Plautus and Terence. Alexandre Dumas chose his heroes from history, and regifted them with life with his unequalled imagination. George Eliot's personality remained a mystery for a long time, but everybody knew that the author of 'Scenes of Clerical Life' was a native of Nuneaton, or had lived long enough in that town to introduce local characters who were recognised at once. The Dame aux CamÉlias, the Camille of the American stage, by Dumas, junr., was inspired, if not suggested, by Manon Lescaut. And is not the Adam Bede of George Eliot a variation of Goethe's Faust? Is not Tess of Thomas Hardy another? And that marvellous hero Tartarin of Alphonse Daudet: do you not recognise in him Don Quixote? More than that, he is a double embodiment, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in one: the Don Quixote who dreams of adventures with lions in the desert, of ascensions on Mont Blanc, of guns, swords, and alpinstocks, and the Sancho Panza who thinks of wool socks, flannel vests, and a medicine-chest for the marvellous journeys that are going to be undertaken—a tremendous creation, this double personage, but not altogether original.

Every character has been described in fiction, every characteristic of mankind has been told; but we like to see those characters described again with new surroundings; we love to hear the philosophy of life told over again in new, pleasant, pithy, witty sentences.

This lack of originality in literature is so obvious, it is so well acknowledged a fact that authors, novelists, or philosophers have used mankind for their work, and availed themselves of all that mankind has written or said before, that the law does not allow the literary man to own the work of his brain for ever and ever, as he owns land or any other valuable possession. After allowing him to derive a benefit for forty or fifty years, his literary productions become common property—that is to say, return to mankind to whom he owed so much of them.