"'Tis very odd, indeed!" rejoined his friend, repeating his words. "You told me this play was your own, and here I find that you have copied it from half a dozen others that have been founded upon the same story."
"Where?" inquired Theodore, reaching for the paper.
"There!" said his friend, pointing to the paragraph.
"And is this London," exclaimed Theodore. "I never read a play, nor the line of a play upon the same subject. Why does not the writer prove the plagiarism?"
"Because he does not know whether it is or is not a plagiarism," rejoined the other. "He is aware that several other authors have constructed dramas upon the same passage in history; and—to draw the most charitable inference, for you would not suspect him of telling a deliberate lie—he thinks you have seen them, and have availed yourself of them."
"Is it not the next thing to a falsehood," indignantly exclaimed Theodore, "to advance a charge, of the justness of which you have not assured yourself?"
"I know not that," rejoined his friend; "but it certainly indicates a rather superficial reverence for truth; and a disposition to censure, which excludes from all claim to ingenuousness the individual who indulges it."
"And this will go the round of the whole kingdom?"
"Yes."
"Should I not contradict it?"