another: the offence in the actual case being aggravated by the fact
that it involves a fraud upon the purchaser of the sermon, who pays
money for what he may already have in his library. The plagiarisms
from Burton stand upon a slightly different though not, I think, a
much more defensible footing. For in this case it has been urged
that Sterne, being desirous of satirizing pedantry, was justified in
resorting to the actually existent writings of an antique pedant of
real life; and that since Mr. Shandy could not be made to talk more
like himself than Burton talked like _him_, it was artistically
lawful to put Burton's exact words into Mr. Shandy's mouth. It makes
a difference, it may be said, that Sterne is not here speaking in his
own person, as he is in his _Sermons_, but in the person of one of his
characters. This casuistry, however, does not seem to me to be sound.
Even as regards the passages from ancient authors, which, while
quoting them from Burton, he tacitly represents to his readers
as taken from his own stores of knowledge, the excuse is hardly
sufficient; while as regards the original reflections of the author of
the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ it obviously fails to apply at all. And in
any case there could be no necessity for the omission to acknowledge
the debt. Even admitting that no more characteristic reflections could
have been composed for Mr. Shandy than were actually to be found in
Burton, art is not so exacting a mistress as to compel the artist
to plagiarize against his will. A scrupulous writer, being also as
ingenious as Sterne, could have found some means of indicating the
source from which he was borrowing without destroying the dramatic
illusion of the scene.

But it seems clear enough that Sterne himself was troubled by no
conscientious qualms on this subject. Perhaps the most extraordinary
instance of literary effrontery which was ever met with is the passage