According to a recent biographer of Byron, originality can be expected from nobody except a lunatic, a hermit, or a sensational novelist. This hasty remark is calculated to prejudice novelists, lunatics, and hermits. People will inevitably turn to these members of society (if we can speak thus of hermits and lunatics), and ask them for originality, and fail to get it, and express disappointment. For all lunatics are like other lunatics, and, no more than sane men, can they do anything original. As for hermits, one hermit is the very image of his brother solitary. There remain sensational novelists to bear the brunt of the world's demand for the absolutely unheard- of, and, naturally, they cannot supply the article. So mankind falls on them, and calls them plagiarists. It is enough to make some novelists turn lunatics, and others turn hermits.

‘Of all forms of theft,’ says Voltaire indulgently, ‘plagiarism is the least dangerous to society!’ It may be added that, of all forms of consolation, to shout ‘plagiarism’ is the most comforting to authors who have failed, or amateurs who have never had the pluck to try. For this reason, probably, a new play seldom succeeds but some unlucky amateur produces his battered old MS., and declares that the fortunate author has stolen from him, who hath Fortune for his foe. Indeed, without this resource it is not known how unaccepted theatrical writers would endure their lot in life. But if stealing is so ready a way to triumph, then humanity may congratulate itself on the wide prevalence of moral sentiments. So very few people greatly succeed (and scarce any one who does not is called a thief) that even if all successful persons are proved robbers, there must be a lofty standard of honesty in literature. On the other hand it is a melancholy fact that the very greatest men of all – Shakspeare, Molière, Virgil (that furtive Mantuan), Pausanias, Theocritus, and Lord Tennyson – are all liable to the charge of theft, as that charge is understood by the advocatus Diaboli. It is a little odd, not only that our greatest are so small, but that our smallest – the persons who bark at the chariot of every passing triumph – are so great. They have never stolen, or nothing worth stealing, or nothing that any one would buy.