“Dimidium facti qui cœpit habet.”
Neither has Beaumarchais rifled Otway, because “Désirer du bien à une femme est ce vouloir du mal à son mari,” has a close resemblance to—
“I hope a man may wish his friend’s wife well,
And no harm done.”
If mere close resemblance establish a charge of plagiarism, then Chaucer, when in speaking of maidens dark or fair he said—
“Blake or white, I toke no kepe,”
stole the thought from the ancient Irish bard, who said—
“Bohumilun a coolen dhuv no baun;”
a line which Chaucer could not have read, though his own is a literal translation of it. Examples like these I might go on citing ad infinitum. As Rosalind says, I could quote you so eight years together, dinners, and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted. But I will conclude with one more case in point between a well-known English author and the French dramatist Molière. Thus writes the one—
“What woful stuff this madrigal would be,