plagiarism is nowhere distinctly forbidden
by Moses; but have not critics judicially pronounced it author-_theft_?
Has not metaphor been sounded through every note of its key-board, to
strike out all that is base whereunto to liken it? Have not old Dr.
Johnson's seven-footed words--the tramp of whose heavy brogans has
echoed down the staircase of years even unto our day--declared
plagiarists from the works of buried writers 'jackals, battening on dead
men's thoughts'?

And yet, after a vast deal of such like catachresis, the orthodoxy of
plagiarism remains still in dispute. What we incorporate among the
cardinal articles of literary faith, China abjures as a dangerous
heresy. But neither our own nor the Chinese creed consists wholly of
tested bullion, but is crude ore, in which the pure gold of truth is
mingled with the dross of error. That is a golden tenet of the
tea-growers which licenses the borrowing of ideas; that 'of the earth,
earthy,' which embargoes every one unborrowed. We build upon a rock when
interdicting plagiarism; but on sand when we make that term inclose
author-theft and author-borrowing. The making direct and unacknowledged
quotations, and palming them off as the quoter's, is a very grave
literary offense. But the expression of similar or even identical
thoughts in different language, in this age of the world must be
tolerated, or else the race of authors soon become as extinct as that of
behemoths and ichthyosauri; and, indeed, far from levying any imposts
upon author-borrowing, rather ought we to vote bounties and pensions to
encourage it.

Originality of thought with men is impossible. There is in existence a
certain amount of thought, but it all belongs to God. Lord paramount
over the empire of mind as well as matter, he alone is seized, in fee
simple right, of the whole domain: provinces of which men hold, as
fiefs, by vassal tenure, subject to reversion and enfeoffment to
another. Nor can any man absolve himself from his allegiance, and extend
absolute sovereignty over broad tracts of idea-territory; for while
feudal princes vested in themselves, by conquest merely, the ownership
of kingdoms, God became suzerain over the empire of thought by virtue of
creation--for creation confers right of property. We do not, then,
originate the thoughts we call our own; or else Pantheism tells no lie
when it declares that man is God, for the differentia which
distinguishes God from man is absolute creative