Chapter i.

Showing what is to be deemed plagiarism in a modern author, and what

is to be considered as lawful prize.

The learned reader must have observed that in the course of this

mighty work, I have often translated passages out of the best antient

authors, without quoting the original, or without taking the least

notice of the book from whence they were borrowed.

This conduct in writing is placed in a very proper light by the

ingenious Abbé Bannier, in his preface to his Mythology, a work of

great erudition and of equal judgment. “It will be easy,” says he,

“for the reader to observe that I have frequently had greater regard

to him than to my own reputation: for an author certainly pays him a

considerable compliment, when, for his sake, he suppresses learned

quotations that come in his way, and which would have cost him but the

bare trouble of transcribing.”

To fill up a work with these scraps may, indeed, be considered as a

downright cheat on the learned world, who are by such means imposed

upon to buy a second time, in fragments and by retail, what they have

already in gross, if not in their memories, upon their shelves; and it

is still more cruel upon the illiterate, who are drawn in to pay for

what is of no manner of use to them. A writer who intermixes great

quantity of Greek and Latin with his works, deals by the ladies and

fine gentlemen in the same paultry manner with which they are treated

by the auctioneers, who often endeavour so to confound and mix up

their lots, that, in order to purchase the commodity you want, you are

obliged at the same time to purchase that which will do you no

service.

And yet, as there is no conduct so fair and disinterested but that it

may be misunderstood by ignorance, and misrepresented by malice, I

have been sometimes tempted to preserve my own reputation at the

expense of my reader, and to transcribe the original, or at least to

quote chapter and verse, whenever I have made use either of the

thought or expression of another. I am, indeed, in some doubt that I

have often suffered by the contrary method; and that, by suppressing

the original author's name, I have been rather suspected of plagiarism

than reputed to act from the amiable motive assigned by that justly

celebrated Frenchman.

Now, to obviate all such imputations for the future, I do here confess

and justify the fact. The antients may be considered as a rich common,

where every person who hath the smallest tenement in Parnassus hath a

free right to fatten his muse. Or, to place it in a clearer light, we

moderns are to the antients what the poor are to the rich. By the poor

here I mean that large and venerable body which, in English, we call

the mob. Now, whoever hath had the honour to be admitted to any degree

of intimacy with this mob, must well know that it is one of their

established maxims to plunder and pillage their rich neighbours

without any reluctance; and that this is held to be neither sin nor

shame among them. And so constantly do they abide and act by this

maxim, that, in every parish almost in the kingdom, there is a kind of

confederacy ever carrying on against a certain person of opulence

called the squire, whose property is considered as free-booty by all

his poor neighbours; who, as they conclude that there is no manner of

guilt in such depredations, look upon it as a point of honour and

moral obligation to conceal, and to preserve each other from

punishment on all such occasions.

In like manner are the antients, such as Homer, Virgil, Horace,

Cicero, and the rest, to be esteemed among us writers, as so many

wealthy squires, from whom we, the poor of Parnassus, claim an

immemorial custom of taking whatever we can come at. This liberty I

demand, and this I am as ready to allow again to my poor neighbours in

their turn. All I profess, and all I require of my brethren, is to

maintain the same strict honesty among ourselves which the mob show to

one another. To steal from one another is indeed highly criminal and

indecent; for this may be strictly stiled defrauding the poor

(sometimes perhaps those who are poorer than ourselves), or, to set it

under the most opprobrious colours, robbing the spittal.

Since, therefore, upon the strictest examination, my own conscience

cannot lay any such pitiful theft to my charge, I am contented to

plead guilty to the former accusation; nor shall I ever scruple to

take to myself any passage which I shall find in an antient author to

my purpose, without setting down the name of the author from whence it

was taken. Nay, I absolutely claim a property in all such sentiments

the moment they are transcribed into my writings, and I expect all

readers henceforwards to regard them as purely and entirely my own.

This claim, however, I desire to be allowed me only on condition that

I preserve strict honesty towards my poor brethren, from whom, if ever

I borrow any of that little of which they are possessed, I shall never

fail to put their mark upon it, that it may be at all times ready to

be restored to the right owner.

The omission of this was highly blameable in one Mr Moore, who, having

formerly borrowed some lines of Pope and company, took the liberty to

transcribe six of them into his play of the Rival Modes. Mr Pope,

however, very luckily found them in the said play, and, laying violent

hands on his own property, transferred it back again into his own

works; and, for a further punishment, imprisoned the said Moore in the

loathsome dungeon of the Dunciad, where his unhappy memory now

remains, and eternally will remain, as a proper punishment for such

his unjust dealings in the poetical trade.