Other related topics at: Literary Topics 764. Originality; Writing "The occasional poet is circumscribed by the narrowness of his subject. Whatever can happen to man has happened so often, that little remains for fancy or invention. We have been all born; we have most of us been married; and so many have died before us, that our deaths can supply but few materials for a poet. In the fate of princes the public has an interest; and what happens to them of good or evil, the poets have always considered as business for the Muse. But after so many inauguratory gratulations, nuptial hymns, and funeral dirges, he must be highly favoured by nature, or by fortune, who says anything not said before. Even war and conquest, however splendid, suggest no new images; the triumphal chariot of a victorious monarch can be decked only with those ornaments that have graced his predecessors." Johnson: Dryden (Lives of the Poets) Link 1,225. Originality; Plagiarism; Writing "This accusation [plagiarism] is dangerous because, even when it is false, it may be sometimes urged with probability. Bruyere declares, that we are come into the world too late to produce anything new, that nature and life are preoccupied, and that description and sentiment have been long exhausted. It is, indeed, certain that, whoever attempts any common topic, will find unexpected coincidence of his thoughts with those of other writers; nor can the nicest judgment always distinguish accidental similitude from artful imitation. There is likewise a common stock of images, a settled mode of arrangement, and a beaten track of transition, which all authours suppose themselves at liberty to use, and which produces the resemblance generally observable among contemporaries. So that in books which best deserve the name of originals, there is little new beyond the disposition of materials already provided; the same ideas and combinations of ideas have been long in the possession of other hands." Johnson: Rambler #143 (July 30, 1751) Link 1,226. Originality; Plagiarism; Writing "The authour who imitates his predecessors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and elegances out of the same general magazine of literature, can with little more propriety be reproached as a plagiary, than the architect can be censured as a mean copier of Angelo or Wren, because he digs his marble out of the same quarry, squares his stones by the same art, and unites them in columns of the same orders." Johnson: Rambler #143 (July 30, 1751) Link 1,227. Originality; Plagiarism; Writing "No writer can be fully convicted of imitation except there is a concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have happened by chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined without any natural series or necessary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are copied." Johnson: Rambler #143 (July 30, 1751) Link 1,228. Originality; Plagiarism; Writing "As not every instance of similitude can be considered as a proof of imitation, so not every imitation ought to be stigmatised as plagiarism. The adoption of a noble sentiment, or the insertion of a borrowed ornament, may sometimes display so much judgment as will almost compensate for invention; and an inferior genius may, without any imputation of servility, pursue the paths of the ancients, provided he declines to tread in their footsteps." Johnson: Rambler #143 (July 30, 1751) Link 1,572. Originality; Writing "The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are preoccupied, is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discourage others, and some themselves; the mutability of mankind will always furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always embellish them with new decorations." Johnson: Adventurer #95 (October 2, 1753) Link 1,812. Originality; Writing "To exact of every man who writes that he should say something new, would be to reduce authors to a small number; to oblige the most fertile genius to say only what is new, would be to contract his volumes to a few pages. Yet, surely, there ought to be some bounds to repetition; libraries ought no more to be heaped for ever with the same thoughts differently expressed, than with the same books differently decorated." Johnson: Idler #85 (December 1, 1759) Link