In considering the first part of the accusation I would recommend all inquirers to read the masterly exposition of the subject of Plagiarism made by Charles Reade (himself one of the successful writers frequently, in his day, accused of the offence), which is printed, in his collected Works, as an appendix to his capital story of “The Wandering Heir,”—a story first made public in dramatic form. That exposition is too long to be quoted here in full, but the appended extract from it, which deals with what Reade calls “the mere intellectual detraction” involved in the charge that he had stolen “The Wandering Heir” from Dean Swift’s “The Journal of a Modern Lady,” is illuminative:

“It [‘the mere intellectual detraction’] is founded on two things—1. The sham-sample swindle, which I have defined. 2. On a pardonable blunder.

“The blunder is one into which many criticasters of my day have fallen; but a critic knows there is a vital distinction between taking ideas from a homogeneous source and from a heterogeneous source, and that only the first mentioned of these two acts is plagiarism; the latter is more like jewel-setting. Call it what you will, it is not plagiarism.

“I will take the fraud and the blunder in order and illustrate them by a few examples, out of thousands.

“By the identical process Pseudonymuncle has used to entrap your readers into believing ‘The Wandering Heir’ a mere plagiarism from Swift, one could juggle those who read quotations, not books, into believing:—

“1. That the Old Testament is full of indelicacy.

“2. That the miracles of Jesus Christ are none of them the miracles of a God, or even of a benevolent man—giving water intoxicating qualities, when the guests had drunk enough, goodness knows; cursing a fig-tree; driving pigs to a watery grave. This is how Voltaire works the sham-sample swindle, and gulls Frenchmen that let him read the Bible for them.

“3. That Virgil never wrote a line he did not take from Lucretius or somebody else.

“4. That Milton the poet is all Homer, Euripides, and an Italian play called ‘Adam in Paradise.’

“5. That MoliÈre is all Plautus and Cyrano de Bergerac, ‘en prend tout son bien oÙ il le trouve.’

“6. That the same MoliÈre never writes grammatical French.

“7. That Shakespeare is all Plautus, Horace, Holinshed, Belleforest, and others.

“8. That Corneille had not an idea he did not steal from Spain.

“9. That Scott has not an original incident in all his works.

“10. That five Italian operas are all English and Irish music.

“11. That the overture to ‘Guillaume Tell’ is all composed by Swiss shepherds.

“12. That ‘Robinson Crusoe’ is a mere theft from Woodes, Rogers, and Dampier.

“Not one of these is a greater lie, and few of them are as great lies, as to call ‘The Wandering Heir’ a plagiarism from Swift.

“Now for the blunder. That will be best corrected by putting examples of jewel-setting and examples of plagiarism cheek by jowl.

“Corneille’s ‘Horace,’ a tragedy founded on a heterogeneous work,—viz., an historical narrative by Livy,—is not a plagiarism. His ‘Cid,’ taken from a Spanish play, is plagiarism. Shakespeare’s ‘Comedy of Errors’ and MoliÈre’s ‘Avare’ are plagiarisms, both from Plautus. Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth,’ taken from a heterogeneous work, a chronicle, is no plagiarism, though he uses a much larger slice of Holinshed’s dialogue than I have taken from Swift, and follows his original more closely. The same applies to his ‘Coriolanus.’ This tragedy is not a plagiarism; for Plutarch’s Life of Coriolanus is a heterogeneous work, and the art with which the great master uses and versifies Volumnia’s speech, as he got it from North’s translation of Plutarch, is jewel-setting, not plagiarism. By the same rule, ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ though Defoe sticks close to Woodes, Rogers, and Dampier in many particulars of incident and reflection, is not a plagiarism, being romance founded on books of fact. The distinction holds good as to single incidents or short and telling speeches. Scott’s works are literally crammed with diamonds of incident and rubies of dialogue culled from heterogeneous works, histories, chronicles, ballads, and oral traditions. But this is not plagiarism; it is jewel-setting. Byron’s famous line—

is a plagiarism from another poet, Crabbe; but Wolsey’s famous distich in Shakespeare’s ‘Henry the Eighth’ is not a plagiarism from Wolsey; it is an historical jewel set in a heterogeneous work, and set as none but a great inventor ever yet set a fact-jewel....”