some other author. It is a very
dangerous practice. Another time I incorporated in a newspaper article a
quotation from Emerson, but the compositor omitted the inverted commas,
and Emerson's sentence read as if it was mine. Of course, no one would
accuse me of choosing Emerson to plagiarize in America, but this article
brought me half a dozen anonymous letters. In one of them there was this
choice bit: 'The second half of the article is by Emerson; the first
half I don't know, but probably not by the author.' Twenty centuries of
Christianity have caused Christians to love one another. But when I
really had a good time was when, deliberately, as I said before, out of
sheer wickedness, I introduced into my text nine lines of Shakespeare.

I have kept the newspapers that commented on it and the anonymous
letters that were mailed to me. One of them had humour in it. 'My dear
sir,' said the writer, 'when you speak of an incident as being a
personal reminiscence, it is a mistake to borrow it of an author so
widely known for the last three centuries as the late William
Shakespeare.'

A celebrated literary friend of mine once amused himself in
incorporating twenty lines of Dickens as his own in the midst of an
essay he published in his own paper.

When he feels dull, he takes from his shelves a scrapbook which contains
the letters and newspaper cuttings referring to the subject.

When a literary man has a reputation of long standing, never for a
moment accuse him of plagiarism. He may express a thought already
expressed by someone else; he may work out a plot which is not original;
but success that lasts rests on some personal merit. I have never heard
successful men charge any of their brethren of the pen with plagiarism.
Successful men are charitable to their craft, as beautiful women are to
their sex.

CHAPTER XXI

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND REMINISCENCES

The best writers of memoirs have been the French, and it is through
those memoirs that we know so well and so intimately the reigns of Louis
XIV., Louis XV., and Napoleon I., as well as the history of the
Revolution, the Restoration, and the Second Empire.

Courtiers, diplomatists, statesmen, and women of the Court, by their
memoirs and letters, have made us acquainted not only with the public
life of Sovereigns, but with all the details of their private life, with
all the Court gossip.

The French, however, care little or nothing for memoirs that do not make