Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 4, April 1852Various
General
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 4, April 1852
Various
Literature -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals
This is the title of a long and prominent article in Graham’s February
number: the writer is but a wordy plagiarist. He has received many
rebukes already for his cool appropriation of the ideas of others, but
Aristabulus Bragg fashion, he still goes on, in the calmest, most
approved style, perfectly unblushing. A year or eighteen months ago an
article of his in Sartain’s Magazine was pointed out to us as containing
some clever thoughts on a very original idea, “the Musical Trinity.” Oh,
we exclaimed, this is not original, the whole idea is stolen from the
German; then we turned to Goethe’s correspondence with a child, Bettina
von Arnheim, and found several passages on the same subject in
conversations with Beethoven and Schlosser. Some time after we read in
Saroni’s Musical Times that the editor had also detected the plagiarism
in this article, and pointed out another author, book and page; saying
with great good-nature that he would not have noticed it, had Mr. Dwight
only written his article as clearly and concisely as the original; “but
to rob an author first and then murder him,” says the editor, “is more
than we can bear.” The author alluded to by Mr. Saroni, is the German
Marx, and he tells us that the fourth paragraph in Sartain’s article is
an almost literal translation of a paragraph in Marx’s
“_Komposition-shlere_,” second edition, p. 24.
We have waded through this last article of Mr. Dwight’s on Don Giovanni,
partly from curiosity, partly for amusement. We wanted to see the extent
to which he would go: and then it amused us to detect the little
pilfered thoughts, trigged out in the Boston transcendental clothing
until their parents would have scarcely recognized them.
It opens with quite a flourish, trying to decorate the story and hero as
the German Hoffman did long ago, but though the whole of the first part
is a spun-out translation of the German critic’s description, it is so
mingled with his own crude, half-educated thoughts, as to require some
little skill in separating Hoffman from Dwight. He has made an attempt
to improve upon the German, and we can not say we admire the Boston
imitation. Judge for yourself by the following comparison:
DWIGHT.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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