But let it suffice to leave these remarks without further comment or explanation.
The use the discerning reader will make of them is, that if different writers agree in the same general disposition, or in the same national character; live together in the same period of time; or in corresponding periods of the progression of manners, or are under the influence of a corresponding genius of policy and government; in every of these cases, some considerable similarity of expression may be occasioned by the agency of general principles, without any suspicion of studied or designed imitation.
II. An identity of phrase and diction, is a much surer note of plagiarism. For considering the vast variety of words, which any language, and especially the more copious ones furnish, and the infinite possible combinations of them into all the forms of phraseology, it would be very strange, if two persons should hit on the same identical terms, and much more should they agree in the same precise arrangement of them in whole sentences.
There is no defending coincidences of this kind; and whatever writers themselves may pretend, or their friends for them, no one can doubt a moment of such identity being a clear and decisive proof of imitation.
Yet this must be understood with some limitations.
For 1. There are in every language some current and authorized forms of speech, which can hardly be avoided by a writer without affectation. They are such as express the most obvious sentiments, and which the ordinary occasions of life are perpetually obtruding on us. Now these, as by common agreement, we chuse to deliver to one another in the same form of words. Convenience dictates this to one set of writers, and politeness renders it sacred in another. Thus it will be true of certain phrases (as, universally, of the words, in any language), that they are left in common to all writers, and can be claimed as matter of property, by none. Not that such phraseology will be frequent in nobler compositions, as the familiarity of its usage takes from their natural reserve and dignity. Yet on certain occasions, which justify this negligence, or in certain authors, who are not over-sollicitous about these indecorums, we may expect to meet with it. Hamlet says of his father,
He was a man, take him for all in all;
I shall not look upon his like again.
which may be suspected of being stolen from Sophocles, who has the following passage in the Trachiniae.
Πάντων ἄριστον ἄνδρα τῶν ἐπὶ χθονὶ
Κτείνασ’, ΟΠΟΙΟΝ ΑΛΛΟΝ ΟΥΚ ΟΨΕΙ ΠΟΤΕ.
v. 824.
The sentiment being one of the commonest, that offers itself to the mind, the sole ground of suspicion must lie in the expression, “I shall not look upon his like again,” to which the Greek so exactly answers. But these were the ordinary expressions of such sentiment, in the two languages; and neither the characters of the great poets, nor the situation of the speakers, would suffer the affectation of departing from common usage.