In the course of a literary or artistic life, or any other life from which the blessing of privacy has been lost, there are many wrongs met with which are real and great wrongs, yet which must be endured because they cannot be remedied by law suits, and there is no other kind of tribunal open; nothing analogous, for instance, to the German Courts of Honour in military matters.
There is, for example, a habit amongst some editors of seeking the expression of opinion, on some political or public question, of some well-known writer; printing this expression of opinion, and, before it is published, showing the proof to some other writer, so that an article of contrary views and opinions may be written in readiness for the following number. Now this seems to me an absolutely disloyal betrayal of trust. In the first place, the proof of an article is of necessity entirely dependent on the good faith of the editor. It is an understood thing, a tacit, unwritten law, that no one except the editor is to see it until the public does so. It is never considered necessary to stipulate this. To show it to a third person to obtain a refutation, or a burlesque, of it before the article is published, seems to me a distinctly incorrect thing to do; an extremely unfair thing to do. Yet it is becoming a common practice; and a writer has no redress against it. It is manifestly not the kind of offence which can be taken into a tribunal, yet it is a very genuine and very annoying injury, and it is one against which I think that authors, whose names are of value, should be protected in some manner.
What redress, moreover, is there for the innumerable thefts from which a writer suffers during his career? I doubt if we, any of us, know the extent to which we are robbed by bookmakers, who are not of the turf, but are quite as unscrupulous as those of the turf.
A few years ago I saw, in the pages of one of the highest class of London periodicals, a story, contained in one number, which was nothing more or less than the reproduction of the Derbyshire part of my well-known novel of _Puck_: the narrative of Ben Dare and his love for his worthless sister Anice. It was far more than a plagiarism; it was a monstrous theft. The name of a lady was put at the end of it, as that of the author; of course, I wrote to the editor, expecting, despite previous experiences, to receive apology and reparation. I misunderstood my generation. The editor wrote back, with airy indifference, that the lady who had produced this shameless piracy had never read _Puck_. To my citation, in reply, of the words of the Emperor Julian, 'If it be sufficient to deny, who will ever be found guilty?' and to my objection that an appropriation of an entire section of a novel could not by any possibility be otherwise than an intentional theft, this model of editors replied not at all. I ought, perhaps, to have sued the publisher, who was doubtless quite innocent, but had I done so it is more than probable that I should have obtained no apology or redress. To begin a law suit is a very serious thing, and all these grievances and piracies are so incessant, though few are quite as impudent as was this, that if one pursued them as they merit one would spend all one's life and substance in Courts of Law.