us and Terence.
Alexandre Dumas chose his heroes from history, and regifted them with
life with his unequalled imagination. George Eliot's personality
remained a mystery for a long time, but everybody knew that the author
of 'Scenes of Clerical Life' was a native of Nuneaton, or had lived long
enough in that town to introduce local characters who were recognised at
once. The _Dame aux Camelias_, the Camille of the American stage, by
Dumas, junr., was inspired, if not suggested, by _Manon Lescaut_. And is
not the _Adam Bede_ of George Eliot a variation of Goethe's _Faust_? Is
not _Tess_ of Thomas Hardy another? And that marvellous hero Tartarin of
Alphonse Daudet: do you not recognise in him Don Quixote? More than
that, he is a double embodiment, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in one:
the Don Quixote who dreams of adventures with lions in the desert, of
ascensions on Mont Blanc, of guns, swords, and alpinstocks, and the
Sancho Panza who thinks of wool socks, flannel vests, and a
medicine-chest for the marvellous journeys that are going to be
undertaken--a tremendous creation, this double personage, but not
altogether original.

Every character has been described in fiction, every characteristic of
mankind has been told; but we like to see those characters described
again with new surroundings; we love to hear the philosophy of life told
over again in new, pleasant, pithy, witty sentences.

This lack of originality in literature is so obvious, it is so well
acknowledged a fact that authors, novelists, or philosophers have used
mankind for their work, and availed themselves of all that mankind has
written or said before, that the law does not allow the literary man to
own the work of his brain for ever and ever, as he owns land or any
other valuable possession. After allowing him to derive a benefit for
forty or fifty years, his literary productions become common
property--that is to say, return to mankind to whom he owed so much of
them.

CHAPTER XX

PLAGIARISM

La Bruyere said: 'Women often love liberty only to abuse it.' Two
hundred years later Balzac wrote: 'There are women who crave for liberty
in order to make bad use of it.' The thoughts are not great, they are
not even true, but that is not the question. Could such a genius as
Balzac be accused of plagiarism because he expressed a thought
practically in the very words of La Bruyere? I would as soon charge
Balzac with plagiarism as I would accuse a Vand