"There is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season
to give a mark of enmity and ill will: a word, a look, which at
one time would make no impression, at another time wounds the
heart, and, like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which,
with its own natural force, would scarce have reached the object
aimed at."

This, it is evident, is but slightly altered, and by no means for the
better, from the more terse and vigorous language of the Bishop:

"There is no small cruelty in the picking out of a time for mischief:
that word would scarce gall at one season which at another
killeth. The same shaft flying with the wind pierces deep, which
against it can hardly find strength to stick upright."

But enough of these _pièces de conviction_. Indictments for plagiarism
are often too hastily laid; but there can be no doubt, I should
imagine, in the mind of any reasonable being upon the evidence here
cited, that the offence in this case is clearly proved. Nor, I
think, can there be much question as to its moral complexion. For the
pilferings from Bishop Hall, at any rate, no shadow of excuse can,
so far as I can see, be alleged. Sterne could not possibly plead any
better justification for borrowing Hall's thoughts and phrases and
passing them off upon his hearers or readers as original, than
he could plead for claiming the authorship of one of the Bishop's
benevolent actions and representing himself to the world as the doer
of the good deed. In the actual as in the hypothetical case there is
a dishonest appropriation by one man of the credit--in the former
case the intellectual, in the latter the moral credit--belonging to