ON, ON THE REPROACH OF PLAGIARISM AGAINST_

Some people have accused Milton of having taken his poem from the
tragedy of "The Banishment of Adam" by Grotius, and from the "Sarcotis"
of the Jesuit Masenius, printed at Cologne in 1654 and in 1661, long
before Milton gave his "Paradise Lost."

As regards Grotius, it was well enough known in England that Milton had
carried into his epic English poem a few Latin verses from the tragedy
of "Adam." It is in no wise to be a plagiarist to enrich one's language
with the beauties of a foreign language. No one accused Euripides of
plagiarism for having imitated in one of the choruses of "Iphigenia" the
second book of the Iliad; on the contrary, people were very grateful to
him for this imitation, which they regarded as a homage rendered to
Homer on the Athenian stage.

Virgil never suffered a reproach for having happily imitated, in the
AEneid, a hundred verses by the first of Greek poets.

Against Milton the accusation was pushed a little further. A Scot, Will
Lauder by name, very attached to the memory of Charles I., whom Milton
had insulted with the most uncouth animosity, thought himself entitled
to dishonour the memory of this monarch's accuser. It was claimed that
Milton was guilty of an infamous imposture in robbing Charles I. of the
sad glory of being the author of the "Eikon Basilika," a book long dear
to the royalists, and which Charles I., it was said, had composed in his
prison to serve as consolation for his deplorable adversity.

Lauder, therefore, about the year of 1752, wanted to begin by proving
that Milton was only a plagiarist, before proving that he had acted as a
forger against the memory of the most unfortunate of kings; he procured
some editions of the poem of the "Sarcotis." It seemed evident that
Milton had imitated some passages of it, as he had imitated Grotius and
Tasso.

But Lauder did not rest content there; he unearthed a bad translation in
Latin verse of the "Paradise Lost" of the English poet; and joining
several verses of this translation to those by Masenius, he thought
thereby to render the accusation more grave, and Milton's shame more
complete. It was in that, that he was badly deceived; his fraud was
discovered. He wanted to make Milton pass for a forger, and he was
himself convicted of forging. No one examined Masenius' poem of which at
that time there were only a few copies in Europe. All England, convinced
of the Scot's poor trick,