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Show LITERARY PIRACY. Following the lead of our American Ameri-can "debunkers," perhaps, literary critics are unearthing what they claim to be monumental frauds perpetrated per-petrated by authors of supposed imperishable im-perishable fame. For example, it is now claimed, ith much show of plausibility, that Dumas stole the plot of "The Three Musketeers" from a book by one Courtil de Sandras, published in 1701. Also that many other novels by the famous French mulatto were taken from books a few centuries old, which Dumas "jazzed up" and published as his own. Another alleged discovery is that John Bunyan cribbed the essentials ' of his "Pilgrim's Progress" from a story by Guileville, a Frenchman who lived three centuries before Bunyan. Then, again, it is asserted that Parson Par-son Weems filched the story of Washington's Wash-ington's hatchet and cherry tree from a story much older, which pertained to an entirely different person. It is quite generally accepted among scholars scho-lars that the cherry tree story is a myth, regardless of its original source. And lest we be charged' with piracy ourselves, let us hasten to say that the above information is condensed from an article in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, as quoted in the Literary Liter-ary Digest. |