originality. I am not like that pessimist philosopher who assumed her
malignity from the fact of the obliquity of the ecliptic; but the truth
is, Nature is a pirate. She has not hesitated to plagiarise from even so
humble an individual as myself. Years after I had placed my wicked
baronet in his living tomb, she starved to death a hunter in Mexico
under precisely similar circumstances; and so late as last month she has
done the same in a forest in Styria. Nay, on my having found occasion in
a certain story ('a small thing, but my own') to get rid of the whole
wicked population of an island by suddenly submerging it in the sea,
what did Nature do? She waited for an insultingly short time (if her
idea was that the story would be forgotten), and then reproduced the
same circumstances on her own account (and without the least
acknowledgment) in the Indian seas. My attention was drawn to both these
breaches of copyright by several correspondents, but I had no redress,
the offender being beyond the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery.

When the story-teller has finished his task and surmounted every
obstacle to his own satisfaction, he has still a difficulty to face in
the choice of a title. He may invent indeed an eminently appropriate
one, but it is by no means certain he will be allowed to keep it. Of
course he has done his best to steer clear of that borne by any other
novel; but among the thousands that have been brought out within the
last forty years, and which have been forgotten even if they were ever
known, how can he know whether the same name has not been hit upon? He
goes to Stationers' Hall to make inquiries; but--mark the usefulness of
that institution--he finds that books are only entered there under their
authors' names. His search is therefore necessarily futile, and he has
to publish his story under the apprehension (only too well founded, as I
have good cause to know) that the High Court of Chancery will prohibit
its sale upon the ground of infringement of title.