It has its phases--its variation of the force described; but the one principle--that of second thought or emendation--will be found at the bottom of all.
In a reply to a letter signed "Outis," and defending Mr. Longfellow from certain charges supposed to have been made against him by myself, I took occasion to assert that "of the class of willful plagiarists nine out of ten are authors of established reputation who plunder recondite, neglected, or forgotten books." I came to this conclusion _à priori_; but experience has confirmed me in it. Here is a plagiarism from Channing; and as it is perpetrated by an anonymous writer in a Monthly Magazine, the theft seems at war with my assertion--until it is seen that the Magazine in question is Campbell's New Monthly for _August_, 1828. Channing, at that time, was comparatively unknown; and, besides, the plagiarism appeared in a foreign country, where there was little probability of detection.
Channing, in his essay on Bonaparte, says:
"We would observe that military talent, even of the highest order, is far from holding the first place among intellectual endowments. It is one of the lower forms of genius, for it is not conversant with the highest and richest objects of thought.... Still the chief work of a general is to apply physical force--to remove physical obstructions--to avail himself of physical aids and advantages--to act on matter--to overcome rivers, ramparts, mountains, and human muscles; and these are not the highest objects of mind, nor do they demand intelligence of the highest order:--and accordingly nothing is more common than to find men, eminent in this department, who are almost wholly wanting in the noblest energies of the soul--in imagination and taste--in the capacity of enjoying works of genius--in large views of human nature--in the moral sciences--in the application of analysis and generalization to the human mind and to society, and in original conceptions on the great subjects which have absorbed the most glorious understandings."
"Military talent, even of the highest _grade_, is _very_ far from holding the first place among intellectual endowments. It is one of the lower forms of genius, for it is _never made_ conversant with the _more delicate and abstruse of mental operations_.