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Is it possible? — is it conceivable that Outis does not here see the begging of the whole question? Why, of course, if the theft had to be committed "in open day" it would not be committed; and if the thief "knew" that every one would cry him down, he would be too excessive a fool to make even a decent thief if he indulged his thieving propensities in any respect. But he thieves at night — in the dark — and not in the open day, (if he suspects it,) and he does not know that he will be detected at all. Of the class of wilful plagiarists nine out of ten are authors of established reputation, who plunder recondite, neglected, or forgotten books.

"I shall not accuse Mr. Poe of plagiarism," says Outis, "for, as I have observed before, such charges are perfectly absurd" — and Outis is certainly right in dwelling on the point that he has observed this thing before. It is the one original point of his essay — for I really believe that no one else was ever silly enough to "observe it before."

Here is a gentleman who writes in certain respects as a gentleman should, and who yet has the effrontery to base a defence of a friend from the charge of plagiarism, on the broad ground that no such thing as plagiarism ever existed. I confess that to an assertion of this nature there is no little difficulty in getting up a reply. What in the world can a man say in a case of this kind? — he cannot of course give utterance to the first epithets that spring to his lips — and yet what else shall he utter that shall not have an air of direct insult to the common sense of mankind? What could any judge on any bench in the country do but laugh or swear at the attorney who should begin his defence of a petty-larceny client with an oration demonstrating à priori that no such thing as petty larceny ever had been, or in the nature of things, ever could be committed? And yet the attorney might make as sensible a speech as Outis — even a more sensible one — anything but a less sensible one. Indeed, mutato nomine, he might employ Outis's identical words. He might say — "In view, gentlemen of the jury, of all the glaring improbabilities of such a case, a prosecuting attorney should be very slow to make such a charge. I say glaring improbabilities, for it seems to me that no circumstantial evidence could be sufficient to secure a verdict of theft in such a case. Look at it. [Here the judge would look at the maker of the speech.] Look at it. A man who aspires to (the) fame (of being a beau) — who seeks the esteem and praise of all the world (of dandies) and lives upon his reputation (for broadcloth) as his vital element, attempts to win his object — how? By stealing in open day the finest waistcoats, the most beautiful dress-coats (no others are worth stealing) and the rarest pantaloons of another, and claiming them as his own; and that too when he knows that every competitor for (the) fame (of Brummelism) and every fashion-plate Magazine in the world, as well as the real owner, will be ready to identify the borrowed plumes in a moment, and cry him down as a thief. A madman, an idiot, if he were capable of such an achievement, might do it, gentlemen of the jury, but no other."

Now, of course, no judge in the world whose sense of duty was not overruled by a stronger sense of the facetious, would permit the attorney to proceed with any such speech. It would never do to have the time of the court occupied by this gentleman's well-meant endeavor to show à priori, the impossibility of that ever happening which the clerk of this same court could show à posteriori had been happening by wholesale ever since there had been such a thing as a foreign count. And yet the speech of the attorney was really a very excellent speech, when we compare it with that of Outis. For the "glaring improbability" of the plagiarism, is a mere nothing by the side of the "glaring improbability" of the theft of the sky-blue dress-coat, and the yellow plaid pantaloons: — we may take it for