A LEARNED PLAGIARY
The greatest man of the last age, Ben Jonson, was willing to give place to the classics in all things: he was not only a professed imitator of Horace, but a learned plagiary of all the others; you track him everywhere in their snow. If Horace, Lucan, Petronius Arbiter, Seneca, and Juvenal had their own from him, there are few serious thoughts which are new in him.... But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him.—J. Dryden. Essay of Dramatic Poesy.
Steal! to be sure they will, and, egad! serve your best thoughts as gipsies do stolen children—disfigure them to make them pass for their own.—R. B. Sheridan. The Critic.