Bells'--that he declared his preference. "Of your heroic heroes, I think
our friend, Monseigneur Athos, Comte de la Fère, is my favorite." Is
this a case of conveyance, such as is often carelessly called
plagiarism? or is it a case of unconscious reminiscence? That Dumas knew
what he was doing when he lifted the situation out of 'La Favorite' is
very likely, for it was not his custom to be overscrupulous in taking
what he could make his own. But Thackeray had been careful to credit the
suggestion of one or two of his earlier French sketches to the Parisian
story-tellers he had put under contribution. Besides he was a man of
transparent honesty; and it is therefore highly probable that he had no
consciousness that the scene was not original with him.

In one of his conversations with Eckermann, Goethe declared that Byron
had not known how to meet the charge of levying on the earlier poets.
The German sage asserted that the English bard should have been far
bolder in his own defence, and far franker also. Byron should have said:
"What is there, is mine; and whether I got it from a book or from life,
is of no consequence; the only point is, whether I have made a right use
of it." And then Goethe added that in one of the Waverley novels Scott
had appropriated a scene from 'Egmont'; "and he had a right to do so;
and because he did it well, he deserves praise." Goethe seemed to think
that the privilege of using again what had been invented by another was
justified only when the later author improved on the earlier, or at
least attained to an equal level. He noted that Scott had taken Mignon
in 'Wilhelm Meister' as the model of Fenella in 'Peveril of the
Peak'--"but whether with equal judgment is another question."

Goethe was wise enough to know that human invention is finite and that
the number of possible effects is limited. He once told Eckermann and
Soret that the Italian playwright, Gozzi, had asserted the existence of