The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1024]
Is it altogether impossible that a critic be instigated to the exposure of a plagiarism, or still better, of plagiarism generally wherever he meets it, by a strictly honorable and even charitable motive? Let us see. A theft of this kind is committed — for the present we will admit the possibility that a theft of this character can be committed. The chances of course are, that an established author steals from an unknown one, rather than the converse; for in proportion to the circulation of the original, is the risk of the plagiarism's detection. The person about to commit the theft, hopes for impunity altogether on the ground of the reconditeness of the source from which he thieves. But this obvious consideration is rarely borne in mind. We read a certain passage in a certain book. We meet a passage nearly similar, in another book. The first book is not at hand, and we cannot compare dates. We decide by what we fancy the probabilities of the case. The one author is a distinguished man — our sympathies are always in favor of distinction. "It is not likely," we say in our hearts, "that so distinguished a personage as A. would be guilty of plagiarism from this B. of whom nobody in the world has ever heard." We give judgment, therefore, at once against B. of whom nobody in the world has ever heard; and it is for the very reason that nobody in the world has ever heard of him, that, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, the judgment so precipitously given is erroneous. Now then the plagiarist has not merely committed a wrong in itself — a wrong whose incomparable meanness would deserve exposure on absolute grounds — but he, the guilty, the successful, the eminent, has fastened the degradation of his crime — the retribution which should have overtaken it in his own person — upon the guiltless, the toiling, the unfriended struggler up the mountainous path of Fame. Is not sympathy for the plagiarist, then, about as sagacious and about as generous as would be sympathy for the murderer whose exultant escape from the noose of the hangman should be the cause of an innocent man's being hung? And because I, for one, should wish to throttle the guilty with the view of letting the innocent go, could it be considered proper on the part of any "acquaintance of Mr. Longfellow's" who came to witness the execution — could it be thought, I say, either chivalrous or decorous on the part of this "acquaintance" to get up against me a charge of "carping littleness," while we stood amicably together at the foot of the gallows?
In all this I have taken it for granted that such a sin as plagiarism exists. We are informed by Outis, however, that it does not. "I shall not charge Mr. Poe with plagiarism," he says, "for, as I have said, such charges are perfectly absurd." An assertion of this kind is certainly funny, (I am aware of no other epithet which precisely applies to it;) and I have much curiosity to know if Outis is prepared to swear to its truth — holding right aloft his hand, of course, and kissing the back of D'Israeli's "Curiosities," or the "Mélanges," of Suard and André. But if the assertion is funny (and it is) it is by no means an original thing. It is precisely, in fact, what all the plagiarists and all the "acquaintances" of the plagiarists since the flood, have maintained with a very praiseworthy resolution. The attempt to prove, however, by reasoning à priori, that plagiarism cannot exist, is too good an idea on the part of Outis not to be a plagiarism in itself. Are we mistaken? — or have we seen the following words before in Joseph Miller, where that ingenious gentleman is bent upon demonstrating that a leg of mutton is and ought to be a turnip?
A man who aspires to fame, etc., attempts to win his object — how? By stealing, in open day, the finest passages, the most beautiful thoughts, (no others are worth stealing,) and claiming them as his own; and that