public, a large proportion of which might have been, with advantage to all parties, wholly suppressed, since they possess in the main but the questionable merit of a metamorphoses, while it seems hopelessly vain to discover in one work of a score, any traces of originality of idea.

The remark ascribed to Pope Ganganelli, that "all books in the known world might be comprised in six thousand folio volumes, if filled with original matter the rest being all plagiarism," was, we think, an extremely liberal

estimate.

One age battens upon its predecessor with gnome-like rapacity, and thus a host of pseudo-authors acquire an undeserved reputation, while that which once possessed substantial nutriment and intrinsic worth, becomes at length reduced to the meagre fricassée. True, we live in an utilitarian day, when the million have little sympathy for the ponderous magnificence of our forefathers; but after all we venture to suggest, whether, in our modern method of condensation, some of the essential vigor and spirit of their productions have not equally left us. The quaint lines of Chaucer still apply with full force,

Our present object, however, is not with the honest retailers of the ancient stores of human knowledge, but with those who have made their appropriations without license or acknowledgement, and who therefore sustain the opposite character. "Authorship," says Schlegel, is, according to the spirit in which it is pursued, an infamy, a pastime, a labor or handicraft, an art, a virtue." How exceedingly few are original thinkers; even those who rank as philosophical writers adopt the opinions of their predecessors-some favorite theory of a former age; and having espoused it, they endorse the new creed with an enthusiasm as zealous as if it were one of their own creation. There are a few noble exceptions to the rule, however, for the honor of learning; the daring Florentine, for instance,

who, in 1615, had the presumption to assert, in direct defiance of the dogmatical opinions of the learned, "the great, the good and wise among men," and contrary to the settled conclusions of all preceding ages, "that the earth revolved round the sun;" and although threatened with death by his bigoted inquisitors for the heresy, yet Galileo boldly maintained his creed, and has long since convinced the world he was right.

A strong resemblance may occur between two writers, if not indeed a strict identity both of ideas and even language, which may be purely accidental; but this must be an occurrence exceedingly rare. We repeat, some may be unconscious plagiarists; a bold or beautiful thought is sometimes likely so to impress the imagination, as to exist in the memory long after its paternity is forgotten, and thus become ingrafted into the mind so as to seem part of itself; such a case would certainly admit of great extenuation in the criminal code of literary jurisprudence.

A writer, it is observed, may steal after the manner of bees, without wronging anybody; but the theft of the ant, which takes away the whole grain of corn, is not to be imitated. Vayer, a French scribe, says, "to take from the ancients, and make one's advantage of what they have written, is like pirating beyond the line; but to steal from one's contemporaries, by surreptitiously appropriating to onesself their thoughts and productions, is like picking people's pockets in the open street." And another extract we had marked, insists that, "it is a greater crime to steal dead men's writings, than their clothes." Instances of petty larceny are undoubtedly more numerous than such as may be styled cases of grand literary larceny; and we have even heard it advocated as a meritorious virtue in a writer, when he shall abstract from a previous author some acknowledged beauty, either of rhetoric or thought, and afresh incorporate it as his own, on the plea that a gem may often lie long obscured, and acquire redoubled lustre by the skill of the artist in the resetting. But viewed as an apology for acknowledged felony, some may deem this, at best, very apocryphal. Direct literary plagiarism has been more rife in modern than in ancient times; and yet we are not to suppose that this species of fraud

Terence, who has been accused of many depredations, says, "nihil est dictum quod non sit dictum prius." One substantial reason why this species of legerdemain was not so much in vogue with the early penmen, is to be

ascribed to the fact that detection would almost inevitably follow, from the limited number of MSS. then in existence compared with the deluge of books since the era of the press.

The following exquisite thought, contained in one of the sonnets of Petrarch, "Trefiro torna; é 'l bel tempo ramena:

E i fiori, e 'l herbe sua dolce familigia." has been more frequently incorporated, or rather imitated, than any gem in the whole wealth of poetry. Milton who, so to speak, ransacked the three worlds for the materiel of his sublime effusions, so closely resembles the Italian muse, that it is difficult to reconcile the coincidence upon any other supposition than that even he borrowed. The couplet referred to in allusion to his loss of sight, occurs, it will be remembered, in his great epic,

"Seasons return, but not to me return Day, or the sweet approach of eve or morn."

He also closely copies Ariosto, in his Vision of Paradise, and Astolpho's Description of the Moon, when he mounts the clouds on the winged horse. Lord Lyttleton, Waller, Gray, Savage, and Kirke White, discover traces of the same thought, and some invest it in language remarkably analogous. Kirke White's lines are as follows:

"Yon brook will glide as softly as before, Yon landscape smile-yon golden harvest

grow,

Yon sprightly lark on mounting wing will

soar,

When Henry's name, alas, is heard no more."

This ill-fated son of genius, however, was mistaken in his foreboding. Spenser has also been charged as a close copyist of both Tasso and Ariosto. A similar illustration might also be given, showing the double plagiarism upon a fine passage from Dante, which was first rendered into our vernacular without acknowledgement by Merivale, and afterwards closely copied by Byron. But we must narrow our limits, or we shall have to invoke among the culprits a host of such other names as Ford, Decker, Marlow, and Shirley, with our several specifications against them.

Homer, Dante, Rabelais, and Shakspeare, Chateaubriand styles the great universal individualities and great parent geniuses, who appear to have borne and suckled all others. The first fertilized antiquity; Eschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Horace, Aristophanes, and Virgil were his sons. Dante in like manner was the father of modern Italy, from Petrarch to Tasso. Rabelais created the literature of France; Montaigne, LaFontaine, Moliere, descend from him; while England owes all to Shakspeare. People often deny the authority of these supreme masters-they rebel against them, proclaim their defects, but with as much propriety as one might enumerate the spots on the sun's disc; they even accuse them of tediousness, and sometimes absurdity, while in the very act of robbing them and decking themselves in their spoils.

Instances of literary larceny we find recorded almost coeval with the era of printing, under the various forms of frequent falsification, pirating, and forgeries; these subsequently led to the enactment of a species of copyright licenses, or privileges to the author or publisher of a book. Notwithstanding which, however, many spurious editions of works were clandestinely reprinted, to the detriment of their rightful owners. One ingenious feature of fraud practised by some of the early piratical printers, was that of counterfeiting the quaint devices or peculiar insignia adopted by publishers of the olden time; some ludicrous cases of imitation were perpetrated upon some of the popular productions of the celebrated Aldine press, which, from their

clumsy execution, were readily detected. One of these is noticed in the preface to an Aldine edition of Livy, printed in 1518.

The Anchor and Dolphin of Aldus, of Venice, from the deserved reputation of this renowned and learned printer, was more copied than any other of the distinguishing marks of their time, by his Italian cotemporaries; but by their forgeries the printers of Lyons rendered themselves most notorious. The classical origin of this still favorite typographical insignia is well known-it was borrowed from a medal of the Emperor Titus; and the hieroglyphic supposed to correspond with that adage, is said to have been the favorite motto of Augustus.

Pickering, the eminent London publisher, it will be remembered, adopts the Aldine anchor on the title-pages of his beautiful editions of the English Classics. Much might be written on the various ornamental devices, rebuses, and characteristic mottoes of the early English printers; yet it would be inappropriate to dwell longer on that subject in this place. One of the most audacious literary forgeries ever imposed upon the credulity of unsuspecting mortals in early times, was that perpetrated by a Dominican monk, named Annius of Vitorbo, attached to the Papal See during the Pontificate of Alexander VI. He wrote seventeen folio volumes, entitled Liber Idem, purporting to be the veritable productions of Sanchoniatho, Manetho, Berosus, the lost works of Xenophon, Philo, Fabius, Victor, &c.

The learned, however, soon discovered the imposture, for he had no manuscripts to produce in his defence. He died in 1502; but he acquired, and still retains, the unenviable reputation of being the most conspicuous of early literary impostors.

Varillas, the French historian, enjoyed for a long period a good reputation as a veracious chronicler of events, till at length the critics of other countries exploded the secret of his undeserved honors. His professions of sincerity went for little, when it was once discovered that his historic anecdotes derived their existence solely from the wonder-loving and inventive brain of the writer,-his affected citations of titles, letters, memoirs and relations, being all imaginary! Having perused

most of the historical books of his day, he discovered a ready facility in imparting fictions as facts, while he quoted his authorities with random recklessness. Another odd genius amused himself, while confined to his room by protracted indisposition, with inflicting on the reading community of his day his "Voyage Round the World," when his physical disability scarcely permitted him to describe the circuit of his own dormitory. His name may be recollected by some- Gemelli Carreri, a Neapolitan. His work exhibits an air of great versimilitude, notwithstanding his descriptions of character and local scenery seem to bear the impress of reality. This species of cheat has not wanted imitators in after times; and, indeed, in our own day, as the scenic descriptions of many a popular author attest, who, to save the trouble of personal exploration, allow a playful fancy to fill the sketch. We could mention, also, a well-known writer in our own country who has committed a somewhat similar act, in his drafts upon an English traveller who visited America soon after the peace, instead of allowing the great natural beauties of our now existing forests and farms to speak for themselves.

Du Halde compiled his account of China from the writings of some of the missionaries; for although he affects to be wonderfully familiar with Chinese scenery, he is known never to have travelled ten leagues from the French capital in his lifetime. Many other names might also be cited of a similar class; but it is needless to extend the list let one other suffice. We refer to Joseph Vella, a Sicilian adventurer, who, in 1794, pretended he had discovered seventeen of the lost books of Livy, in Arabic, having, as he said, procured them from a Frenchman, who purloined the works from a niche in the mosque of St. Sophia, at Constantinople. The story was plausible enough, since many of the classics had descended through the Arabians. They were subsequently published in Italy, in four volumes, 4to. It is true, he exhibited certain MSS. which he had himself fabricated, being, in fact, but interpolations from Florus. He displayed considerable adroitness, however, in disfiguring the whole-altering page after page, and by interspersing numberless

dots, and other unintelligible marks and dashes. It was not long, in spite of his strenuous efforts at concealment, before his cheat was found out, although not till most of the literati of his day had become his dupes. On examining his MSS. they were found to consist of nothing but a history of Mahomet, instead of, as had been pretended, the lost works of Livy, and an early authentic history of Sicily, in the Arabic period, comprehending about two centuries-ages of which their own historians were entirely ignorant. Vella lost an eye in his laborious trifling; and although his loss was temporarily soothed by a pension from the Neapolitan king, and various honors and dignities, including a professorship at Palermo, yet, when his "sweetness" became thus ultimately overtasked, he was doomed to fifteen years' incarceration.

The next case we shall refer to is that of Psalmanazar, a man of considerable learning and singular ingenuity, who, in his time, acquired much notoriety. He was one of the writers employed in compiling a work on Universal History, a task which he executed with much skill and fidelity. Originally a wandering adventurer from his home and country, and while under the pressure of poverty, having enlisted in the army, he first attracted the notice of a Col. Lauder, in the garrison of Sluys, where he artfully circulated a report that he was a native of the island of Formosa, from which place he was expelled by the hostility of the Japanese on account of his religious faith, having been previously proselytised to Christianity from Paganism, by the Jesuits. The plausibility of his story induced the colonel to espouse his cause, and he subsequently was conveyed to England, where he was introduced to the Bishop of London, who listened to his account with pity and implicit faith, became his patron, and generously contributed towards his support. His artful contrivance of producing and speaking a language with its alphabet and grammar purely of his own invention, no less than his singular propensity for eating raw meat, roots and herbs, soon rendered him an object of curious speculation and public notoriety. The keen-eyed scepticism of some of the more discerning, however, viewed

His

his pretensions with suspicion: and yet, could he have silenced the secret accusations of his own conscience, the most sanguine wishes of the impostor might possibly yet have been successful. He wrote, in Latin, an interesting description of the island from which he professed to have been expatriated on account of his newly-espoused religion, which was received by the public with favor; a translation was speedily effected, and read with avidity, which was referred to as authority by Buffon and others, while his characteristic self-complacency and adroitness in warding off every avenue to detection, seemed to have completely established his claim to public confidence. powers of memory were so tenaciously correct, from the exercise of habit in verbal arrangement, that on being desired to translate a long list of English words into the Formosan language, which were marked down without his knowledge, his credit was considerably corroborated by his correctly affixing the same terms to the same words, on the question being repeated three, six, and even twelve months afterwards. He at length found a warm advocate in the Bishop of Oxford, who procured for him apartments in one of the Universities, for the further prosecution of his studies. To impress his new neighbors at this place with the idea of his intense and indefatigable application, it was his custom to keep lighted candles in his room during the night, and to sleep in an easy-chair, to prevent the impression that so extraordinary a genius indulged in so unphilosophical a relaxation as that of reposing on a bed. His next step was to return to London and publish a version of the Church Catechisin in his pretended vernacular, which, having passed under the close scrutiny and supervision of the learned, was pronounced a real language, and no counterfeit. He had now attained the acmé of his fame; but no sooner had he reached it, than the tide of his popularity began to wane; for suspicion had already begun to be excited by sundry contradictions which were betrayed in his narrative, and other seeming absurdities, which presently caused his benefactors to abate their ardor, and ultimately to withdraw altogether their support. At length the reaction in the public mind became

so strong, that it speedily grew into the most violent expressions of malignity and irritated resentment against him; and as his means of subsistence became consequently precarious, he would have become again the victim of abject distress, had it not been for the admitted abilities he possessed, which induced the booksellers to engage his services upon the work already referred to the laborious task of compiling a Universal History. His real name and place of birth were never revealedthese he studiously concealed on account of his disgrace. He was supposed to have been from the south of France; and although he never publicly avowed his fraud, yet he is said to have confessed it to confidential friends, with tears and unfeigned repentance; and, but for such acknowledgment on his part, his ingeniously fabricated illusions of an unknown people and their language, might have, to this day, been classed with the mysteries of mesmerism, and other subtle sophisms, which perplex the sagacious and amuse the vulgar. This extraordinary individual died in 1763.

D'Israeli, as might be anticipated, has been the most industrious collator of cases of lierary fraud, of any writer we possess; and we need scarcely add, that we shall refer freely to him as an authority. He relates, among many others, the following curious instance of literary forgery, practised on Capt. Wilford by a learned Hindoo, who, to ingratiate himself and his studies with the too zealous and pious European, contrived, among other attempts, to give the history of Noah and his three sons, in his Purana," under the designation of Satyavrata. The captain having read the passage, transcribed it for Sir William Jones, who translated it as a curious extract; the whole was an interpolation, by the dexterous introduction of a forged sheet, discolored and prepared for the purpose of deception; and which, having served his design for the moment, was afterwards withdrawn. As books in India are not bound, it is not difficult to introduce "loose leaves." To confirm his various impositions, this learned forger had the patience to write two voluminous sec

tions, in which he connected all the legends together in the style of the Puranas, consisting of 1,200 lines! George Stevens, the annotator of Shakspeare, merits a passing tribute at our hands, for his numerous literary misdemeanors; he was a creature of such a propensity to commit forgeries and adulterations, that most such instances of his times, it has been asserted, nay, without much risk, may be attributed to him. He practised an amusing cheat upon the well-known antiquary Gough; this was the famous tomb-stone on which was engraved the drinking-horn of Hardyknute, to indicate his last fatal carouse; for this royal Dane died in intoxication! To prevent any doubt, the name in Saxon characters was sufficiently legible.Steeped in pickle to hasten a precocious antiquity, it was then consigned to a corner in a broker's shop, where it was soon detected by the inquisitive gaze of Gough, who eagerly purchased the precious relic-who set to work preparing a learned dissertation, worthy of its reported value. The enthusiastic antiquary never forgave this outrage upon his credulity. The stone is still extant in the British Museum, a lasting warning to the Pickwickians of all time. But to avoid prolixity on a subject occupying so ample a space in bibliographical history, we shall have to pass over in silence many cases of literary imposition, which we might otherwise adduce.

During the troublous reign of Charles I., numerous political forgeries were perpetrated. The famous Eikon Basiliké has been ranked among the number, from the ambiguous claim of Gauden; and, as it appears from the note-book of Sir Nicholas Hyde, chief justice during the reign of that unfortunate prince, Sir Robert Cotton must not be denied his claim altogether to the honors of a literary filching, since there is mention made of a pardon he had obtained from King James, for embezzling the public records, &c.; and we read even of authors at the solemn hour of dissolution having been the prey of those whose moral obliquity did not prevent the lawless indulgence of the passion.